The Family Reads Darkest Hour
by RicardianScholar Clark-Weasley
Summary: Sequel to The Family Reads Reunion. Now Suze's family are just about to discover Paul Slater's true nature as well as Jesse's history.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Note: I do apologise for the wait. I had been incredibly busy in the last year that I had little time to start a new fic, that and I had been inspired by other fandoms again. As per usual I will update as regularly as possible and only after I receive ten reviews because I'm greedy like that. Thank you for your patience and I hope you enjoy this chapter. _

The Ackerman family sat in silence when they ate some more snacks left for them by Father Dominic. The only sounds that could be heard were the desperate gulping as they refreshed their throats with soda. Reading the long entries had taken a lot out of their voices and they needed a break from talking.

They needed a break from all the emotional turmoil.

Andy and Helen were quite certain that there isn't a single parent out there that has gone through so much worry about all of their children.

Not even David was out of danger and he was the good one!

"I suppose we should start the next one," Andy said finally breaking the silence; "though I'll be honest I dread to find out what other dangers Suze found herself in."

Helen just moaned quietly to herself.

Jake reluctantly picked up the next diary and opened it.

**Summer. Season of long, slow days and short, hot nights.**

"Days full of surfing and girls in bikinis with nights filled with BBQs and snogging girls in bikinis," Brad said dreamily.

"What girl would want to snog you? Apart from, you know, Debbie," Jake grinned.

"SHE ISN'T MY GIRLFRIEND!"

"Brad," Andy moaned, "keep it down, and Jake don't tease your brother."

**Back in Brooklyn, where I spent my first fifteen of them, summer, when it hadn't meant camp, had meant hanging out on the stoop with my best friend Gina and her brothers, waiting for the ice cream truck to come by. When it wasn't too hot, we played a game called War, dividing into teams with the other kids in the neighborhood and shooting each other with imaginary guns.**

"Fun," David muttered dryly. That was the very opposite of his definition of fun.

"So cool," Brad grinned. Then his grin faded quickly as he realised he called Suze cool, but then again she was with Gina, so it was all right.

**When we got older, of course, we quit playing War. Gina and I also started laying off the ice cream.**

"Girls," all the boys muttered.

**Not that it mattered. None of the neighborhood guys, the ones we used to play with, wanted anything to do with us. Well, with me , anyway. I don't think they'd have minded renewing acquaintances with Gina, but by the time they finally noticed what a babe she'd grown into, she'd set her sights way higher than guys from the 'hood.**

Jake couldn't help but preen a little at that while Brad just drooled over the thought of Gina in a bikini.

**I don't know what I expected from my sixteenth summer, my first since moving to California to live with my mom and her new husband . . . and, oh, yeah, his sons. **

All three Ackerman brothers shifted uncomfortably. They tried not to show how hurt they all felt that they were the afterthought there.

**I guess I envisioned the same long, slow days. Only these, in my mind, would be spent at the beach rather than on an apartment building's front stoop.**

"Ha! I wish!" Brad muttered. "I haven't had a summer on the beach and nothing else since I was ten."

"You should have worked harder at school then," Andy said sternly.

**And as for those short, hot nights, well, I had plans for those, as well. All I needed was a boyfriend.**

"Urgh," the brothers groaned**. **

**But as it happened, neither the beach nor the boyfriend materialized the latter because the guy I liked?**

"Is dead," Brad supplied.

"Brad!"

"Well...he's right," David pointed out, "Suze likes Jesse, and at this point in time, he is dead."

**Yeah, he so wasn't interested. **

"Lies," Jake said, "Jesse is far too interested in Suze for my liking."

"I would prefer it if he wasn't living in her bedroom," Andy agreed, "but for now, I think it is safe to say Jesse won't do anything untoward right now."

"Unfortunately," Helen muttered.

**At least, as far as I could tell. And the former because...**

**Well, because I was forced ****to get a job.**

"It's a good experience!" Andy defended himself as his children glared at him. "You're all going to be adults soon, Jake you already are, you need to learn to make a living."

**That's right: A job.**

"You'd think I was torturing her," Andy grumbled.

**I was horrified when one night at dinner, around the beginning of May, my stepfather Andy asked me if I'd put in any summer employment applications anywhere. I was all, "What are you talking about?"**

**But it soon became clear that, like the many other sacrifices I'd been asked to make since my mother met, fell in love with, and married Andy Ackerman,**

"A job isn't a horrible sacrifice!" Helen snapped at the book. "It's an excellent way to gain work experience, a reference, and earn a little money of your own."

Andy, however, just laughed it off. He was too used to this since he first introduced the concept to Jake when he was fourteen.

**Host of a popular ****cable ****television ****home improvement**** program, native Californian, and father of three, my long hot summer lazing at the beach with my friends was not to be.**

"Definitely not," Andy grinned.

**In the Ackerman household, it soon unfolded; you had two alternatives for how you spent your summer break: a job, or ****remedial tutoring****. Only Doc, my youngest stepbrother, known as David to everyone but me, was exempt from either of these, as he was too young to work, and he had made good enough grades that he'd been accepted into a month-long ****computer ****camp, at which he was presumably learning skills that would make him the next ****Bill Gates,**** only hopefully without the bad haircut and Wal-Mart-y ****sweaters.**

"As if Mom will let him have a bad haircut," Brad rolled his eyes.

**My second-youngest stepbrother, Dopey (also known as Brad) was not so lucky. Dopey had managed to flunk both English and Spanish, an astounding feat, in my opinion, English being his native language, **

"Poetry is hard!" Brad wailed. "And don't get me started on that Shakespeare guy!"

"Believe me," David muttered, "I'm sure Shakespeare feels the same."

**and so was being forced by his stepfather to attend summer school five days a week . . . when he wasn't being used as unpaid slave labor on the project Andy had undertaken while his ****TV show**** was on summer hiatus: tearing down a large portion of our house's backyard deck and installing a hot tub.**

"Which was instantly used as an excuse for partying and God knows what," Andy grumbled.

"Perhaps you should have paid me," Brad said cheekily.

"Don't push your luck, young man."

**Given the alternative, employment or summer school, I chose to seek employment.**

"As if summer school would want Suze there," Brad grumbled, "with her near perfect grades and all."

"That's because she took advantage of the study sessions I set up," David crossed his arms, "you could have passed with a B at least if you joined in as well."

**I got a job at the same place my oldest stepbrother, Sleepy, works every summer. He, in fact, recommended me, an act which, at the time, simultaneously stunned and touched me. It wasn't until later that I found out that he had received a small bonus for every person he recommended who was later hired.**

"Heh," Jake said sheepishly, "that was indeed the bonus but I didn't want her to end up working anywhere dangerous."

"You are a good brother," Helen praised him, "even if you are a greedy one."

"It's for my Camaro!"

**Whatever. What it actually boils down to is this: Sleepy, Jake, as he is known to his friends and the rest of the family, and I are now proud employees of the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort, Sleepy as a lifeguard at one of the resort's many pools, and me as ...**

Brad started to snicker.

**Well, I signed away my summer to become a hotel staff babysitter.**

The snicker turned into all out laughter.

**Okay. You can stop laughing now.**

The only reason Brad stopped was because Jake kicked him.

**Even I will admit that it's not the kind of job I ever thought I'd be suited for, since I am not long on patience and am certainly not overly fond of having my hair spat up in. But allow me to point out that it does pay ten dollars an hour, and that that does not include tips.**

Brad whistled impressed. "No wonder she managed to buy all those designer clothes," Helen murmured.

**And let me just say that the people who stay at the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort? Yeah, they are the kind of people who tend to tip. Generously.**

"Very," Jake said dreamily as he remembered his $1000 tip he received one summer.

**The money, I must say, has gone a long way toward healing my wounded pride. If I have to spend my summer in mindless drudgery, earning a hundred bucks a day, and frequently more, amply compensates for it. Because by the time the summer is over, I should have, without question, the most stunning fall ****wardrobe**** of anyone entering the junior class of the Junipero Serra Mission Academy.**

All the males in the room rolled their eyes.

**So think about that, Kelly Prescott, while you spend your summer lounging by your father's pool. I've already got four pairs of Jimmy Choos, paid for with my own money.**

"Perhaps I should teach her about the importance of being frugal," Andy muttered.

**What do you think about that, Little Miss Daddy's AmEx?**

"I'm too rich and spoilt to care?" Jake suggested.

**The only real problem with my summer job, besides the whiny children and their equally whiny, but loaded, parents, of course, is the fact that I am expected to report there at eight o'clock in the morning every day.**

**That's right. EIGHT A.M. No sleeping in for old Suze this summer.**

"Teenagers," Andy and Helen muttered.

**I must say I find this a bit excessive. And believe me, I've complained. And yet the management staff at the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort have remained stubbornly unswayed by my persuasive arguments for refraining from offering babysitting services until nine.**

"It wouldn't be good business if they did," Andy rolled his eyes.

**And so it is that every morning (I can't even sleep in on Sundays, thanks to my stepfather's insistence that all of us gather around the dining table for the elaborate brunch he prepares; he seems to think we are the Camdens or the Waltons something) **

"IT'S FAMILY TIME!"

"Dad, we love you, we love your food, but we love to sleep as well," Jake said exasperated. He really sympathised with Suze on the sleep issue.

**I am up before seven...**

**Which has, I've been surprised to learn, its advantages.**

"It does?!"

**Although I would not list seeing Dopey without a shirt, sweating like a pig, and gulping OJ from the carton as one of them.**

"Urgh," Jake and David groaned. It certainly wasn't the prettiest sight first thing in the morning.

"Brad, I've told you not to drink straight out of the carton!" Helen snapped.

"Sorry," Brad mumbled.

**There are a lot of girls who go to my school who would, I know, pay money to see Dopey, and Sleepy, too, for that matter, without a shirt, sweat or no sweat. Kelly Prescott, for instance. And her best friend, and Dopey's sometime flame, Debbie Mancuso. I myself do not understand the attraction, but then I can only suppose that these girls have not been around my stepbrothers after a meal in which beans played any sort of role on the menu.**

Helen shuddered, Andy looked revolted, and the three brothers just smiled sheepishly.

**Still, anyone who cared to see Dopey do his calendar pinup imitation could easily do so for free, merely by stopping by our house any weekday morning. For it is in our backyard that Dopey has been, from approximately six in the morning until he has to leave for summer school at ten, stripped to the waist, and performing rigorous manual labor under the eagle eye of his father.**

"Slave driver," Brad muttered.

**On this particular morning, the one where I caught him, once again, drinking directly from the juice carton, a habit of which my mother and I have been trying, with little success, to cure the entire Ackerman clan, Dopey had apparently been doing some digging, since he left a trail of mud along the kitchen floor, in addition to a dirt-encrusted object on what had once been an immaculate counter (I should know: it had been my turn to 409 it the night before).**

Helen glowered at Brad but didn't say anything since she had him clean it up when it had actually happened.

**"Oh," I said, as I stepped into the kitchen. "Isn't that a lovely picture."**

**Dopey lowered the orange juice container and looked at me.**

**"Don't you have somewhere to be?" he asked, wiping his mouth with the back of a wrist.**

Helen grimaced. Whatever happened to manners?

**"Of course," I said. "But I was hoping that before I left, I could enjoy a nice glass of calcium fortified juice. I see now that that will not be possible."**

**Dopey shook the carton. "There's still some left," he said.**

"Yes but it is now mixed with your saliva," Helen shuddered.

**"Mixed with your backwash?" I heaved a shudder. "I think not."**

Andy looked down at his wife amused. "Like mother, like daughter," he grinned.

**Dopey opened his mouth to say something, presumably his usual suggestion that I chew on some piece of his anatomy, but his father's voice called from outside the sliding glass doors to the deck.**

Andy shot a warning look at Brad. He hated it when his middle son and stepdaughter fought, and he had hoped he instilled some better manners in his son. Apparently not.

**"Brad," Andy yelled. "That's enough of a break. Get back out here and help me lower this."**

"Slave driver," Brad muttered again.

**Dopey slammed down the carton of OJ. Before he could stalk from the room, however, I stopped him with a polite, "Excuse me?"**

**Because he wore no shirt, I could see the muscles in Dopey's neck and shoulders tense as I spoke. "All right already," he said, spinning around and heading back toward the juice carton. "I'll put it away. Jeez, why are you always on me about crap like- "**

"Because its hygienic," Helen frowned at her stepson.

**"I don't care about that," I interrupted him, pointing at the juice carton, although it had to have been making the counter sticky.**

Helen shuddered. Her poor clean counter.

**"I want to know what that is."**

**Dopey looked where I'd moved my finger. He blinked down at the dirt-encrusted oblong object.**

"Oh! It's the letters!" David leaned in interestedly. He had been so disappointed when he had found out he missed out on the historical artefact found in their own garden. In the end Suze and Jake had taken him to the museum so he could examine them. Though it did take a lot of persuading.

**"I dunno," he said. "I found it buried in the yard while I was digging out one of the posts."**

"Lucky," David muttered jealously.

**I gingerly lifted what appeared to be a metal box, about six inches long by two inches thick, heavily rusted and covered in mud. There were a few places where the mud had rubbed off, though, and there you could see some words painted on the box. The few I could make out were delicious aroma and quality assured. When I shook the box, it rattled. There was something inside.**

**"What's in it?" I asked Dopey.**

"First time in ages she had spoken me without an insult," Brad mumbled in awe.

**He shrugged. "How should I know? It's rusted shut. I was gonna take a ****-****"**

**I never did find out what Dopey was going to do to the box, since his older brother Sleepy walked into the kitchen at that moment, reached for the orange juice carton, opened it, and downed the remaining contents. When he was through, he crumpled the carton, threw it into the trash compactor, and then, apparently noticing my appalled expression, said, "What?"**

"Revolting," Helen shuddered.

**I don't get what girls see in them. Seriously. They are like animals.**

"WE ARE NOT!" Brad and Jake wailed simultaneously.

"That's just an insult to animals," David muttered.

**And not the cute fuzzy kind, either.**

"So only the ugly ones have to suffer such discrimination?"

"David!" Jake cried out.

**Meanwhile, outside, Andy was calling imperiously for Dopey again.**

"Imperiously?" Andy raised an eyebrow.

"I say it again – slave driver!"

"Then pass English and Spanish this year!"

**Dopey muttered some extremely colorful four-letter words beneath his breath, then shouted, **

Andy glowered at his middle child.

**"I'm coming, already," and stomped outside.**

**It was already seven forty-five, so Sleepy and I really had to "motor," as he put it, to get to the resort on time. But though my eldest stepbrother has a tendency to sleepwalk through life, there's nothing somnambulistic about his driving. I punched in at work with five minutes to spare.**

"Didn't what happened with Michael teach you anything about speed?!" Helen shrieked.

"Mom!" Jake protested. "I kept within the limit! I learned my lesson, trust me!"

**The Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort prides itself on its efficiency. And it is, in fact, a very smoothly run operation. As a staff babysitter, it's my responsibility, after punching in, to ask for my assignment for the day. That's when I find out whether I'll be washing strained carrots or burger fixings out of my hair after work. On the whole, I prefer burgers, but there's something to be said for strained carrots: generally the people who eat them can't talk back to you.**

**When I heard my assignment for that particular day, however, I was disappointed, even though it was a burger-eater.**

"Problem kid?" Andy asked sympathetically.

"A bit," Jake said, "but Suze sorted him out."

**"Simon, Susannah," Caitlin called. "You're assigned to Slater, Jack."**

"Slater?" Brad repeated. "As in-"

"Yeah, Jack is Paul's little brother," Jake interrupted.

"He better not be like his older brother," Brad muttered.

Paul had been a jackass from the beginning, stealing Kelly, trashing their house, hurting Suze...Brad had a burning desire to punch that smug git's face in.

"He isn't," Jake reassured him.

**"For God's sake, Caitlin," I said to Caitlin, who was my supervisor. "I was stuck with Jack Slater yesterday. And the day before."**

"She shouldn't complain too much or she will get fired," Andy fretted.

**Caitlin is only two years older than me, but she treats me like I'm twelve. In fact, I'm sure the only reason she tolerates me is because of Sleepy: she is as warm for his form as every other girl on this planet ...except, of course, me.**

"Thank God," Jake murmured, it would be a nightmare if Suze – his little sister – fancied him too. Although he didn't like the idea of someone patronising Suze, because he could foresee them receiving a punch from her, he did like Caitlin. Not as much as Gina, he has never liked a girl like he liked Gina, but enough to be relieved as well that Caitlin and Suze got on somewhat well.

He would like it if every girl he dated got on well with his family.

**"Jack's parents," Caitlin informed me, without even looking up from her clipboard, "requested you, Suze."**

"That's a good," Andy said cheerfully, "it means she's well liked and can be hired again next year."

**"Couldn't you have said I was already taken?"**

"Come on, Suze!" Andy said, "It's a good thing. She needs to work on her behaviour or she will never keep a job."

"I'm sure she'll be more pleasant when she's doing something she wants to do," Helen reassured Andy.

Though to be quite honest she was starting to think her husband took work ethics too far.

**Caitlin did look up then. She looked at me with cool, blue contact-lensed eyes. "Suze," she said. "They like you."**

"Good, she'll sort Suze out," Andy said satisfied.

**I fiddled with my bathing suit straps. I was wearing the regulation navy blue swimsuit beneath my regulation navy blue Oxford T-shirt and khaki shorts. With pleats, no less. Appalling.**

Jake rolled his eyes. Girls.

**I mentioned the uniform, right? I mean the part where I have to wear a uniform to work? **

**No kidding.**

**Every day. A uniform.**

"It could be so much worse," Andy rolled his eyes, "I wore some terrible uniforms when I did summer work. The colours would be bright and clashing. I looked like a clown.

The boys snickered and Helen couldn't help but laugh a little either.

**If I'd known about the uniform beforehand, I never would have applied for the job.**

"Drama Queen," Jake muttered.

"I would have forced her, uniform or not," Helen said firmly. "It's no excuse to not work."

**"Yeah," I said. "I know they like me."**

**The feeling isn't mutual. It isn't that I don't like Jack, although he's easily the whiniest little kid I have ever met. I mean, you can see why he's that way, just take a look at his parents, a pair of career-obsessed physicians who think dumping their kid off with a hotel babysitter for days on end while they go sailing and golfing is a fine family vacation.**

Andy looked disgusted. A family holiday is supposed to be a family holiday. If he could afford such a vacation he would have family dinners, family trips to historical sites, family athletics, and to relax together by the pool.

**It's actually Jack's older brother I have the problem with. Well, not necessarily a problem ... More like I would just rather avoid seeing him while I am wearing my incredibly unstylish Pebble Beach**

"Urgh," Brad groaned.

**Hotel and Golf Resort uniform khaki shorts.**

**Yeah. The ones with the pleats in them.**

Everyone rolled their eyes at Suze's vanity.

**Except, of course, that every time I've run into the guy since he and his family arrived at the resort last week, I've been wearing the stupid things.**

**Not that I care, particularly, what Paul Slater thinks about me. I mean, my heart, to coin a phrase, belongs to another.**

"Vanity thy name is Susannah," Jake muttered.

Helen just silently squealed in excitement over Suze's admittance for her feelings for Jesse. Andy smiled down at his wiggling excited wife, indulging in her childish joy.

**Too bad he shows no signs whatsoever of actually wanting it. My heart, that is.**

"He does," Helen said firmly, "he's just too honourable."

**Still, Paul, that's his name; Jack's older brother, I mean: Paul Slater is pretty incredible. I mean, it isn't just that he's a hottie.**

"Urgh," the three brothers moaned.

**Oh, no. Paul's hot and funny. Every time I go to pick Jack up or drop him off at his family's hotel suite, and his brother Paul happens to be there, he always has some flippant remark to make about the hotel or his parents or himself. Not mean or anything. Just funny.**

"Somehow I doubt that," Andy said sceptically.

**And I think he's smart, too, because whenever he isn't on the golf course with his dad or playing tennis with his mom, he's at the pool reading. And not your typical pool book, either. No Clancy or Crichton or King for Paul. Oh, no. We're talking stuff by guys like Nietzsche, or Kierkegaard.**

"Show off," Brad muttered.

**Seriously. It's almost enough to make you think he's not from California.**

"HEY! WHAT'S THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?!"

**And of course it turns out, he's not: the Slaters are visiting from Seattle.**

"Duh."

**So you see, it wasn't just that Jack Slater is the whiniest kid I've ever met: there was also the fact that I wasn't really all that enthused about his hottie brother seeing me, yet again, in shorts that make my butt look roughly the size of Montana.**

Once again everyone rolled their eyes.

**But Caitlin was totally uninterested in my personal feelings on the matter.**

"_We're_ not interested in your personal feelings on the matter," Jake murmured, "and we're your family."

**"Suze," Caitlin said, looking down at her clipboard again. "Nobody likes Jack. But the fact is, Dr. and Mrs. Slater like you. So you're spending the day with Jack. Capeesh?"**

"Exactly!" Andy exclaimed.

**I sighed gustily, but what could I do? Aside from my pride, my tan was the only thing that was really going to suffer from spending yet another day with Jack. The kid doesn't like swimming, or bike riding, or Rollerblading, or Frisbee tossing, or anything, really, to do with the great outdoors. His idea of a good time is to sit inside the hotel room and watch cartoons.**

"Sounds like a normal child to me," Helen murmured. Suze hadn't been interested in going out unless she was with Gina.

In fact when Helen thought about it, it becomes obvious until she was ten, Suze had been rather fearful in going out to play on her own. It must have been the ghosts taking an affect on her. Could Jack also...? Helen shook her head, no, not every socially challenged child is a mediator.

**I'm not kidding, either. He is, without a doubt, the most boring kid I ever met. I find it hard to believe he and Paul came from the same gene pool.**

"I know," David agreed, "I find it hard to believe Brad and I came from the same gene pool."

"David," Andy said warningly.

**"Besides," Caitlin added, as I was standing there, fuming. "Today is Jack's eighth birthday."**

"_What?_!"

"How can his parents abandon him on his birthday?!" Helen shrieked.

"What douches," Brad grumbled.

"That poor kid," Jake murmured.

**I stared at her. "His birthday? It's Jack's birthday, and his parents are leaving him with a sitter all day?"**

"Despicable," Andy growled. He had always gone out his way to make every birthday of all of his children was a special day for them.

**Caitlin shot me a severe look. "The Slaters say they'll be back in time to take him to dinner at the Grill."**

"A child at the _Grill_?!"

**The Grill. Whoopee. The Grill is the fanciest restaurant at the resort, maybe even on the entire peninsula. The cheapest thing they serve there costs about fifteen dollars, and that's the house salad. The Grill is so not a fun place to take a kid on his eighth birthday. I mean, even Jack, the most boring child in the world, couldn't have a fun time there.**

"Are all rich people incompetent at parenting?" Helen groused under her breath. Kelly, Bryce, Heather, Tad, and now these two poor boys. All ruined by the spoiling of their parents and in some cases emotional neglect.

**I don't get it. I really don't. I mean, what's wrong with these people? And how, seeing the way they treat their youngest child, had their other one managed to turn out so...**

"So?"

**Well, hot?**

Andy face palmed, Brad gawked unattractively at the book, David looked up disbelievingly, and Helen wondered where she went wrong in her own parenting.

"Good looks have nothing to do with personality," Jake shook his head, "unless someone becomes egotistic because they were told constantly how beautiful they are."

"Or the opposite," David said softly, "But honestly...?"

"Oh Susannah," Helen murmured, "What am I to do with you?"

**At least, that was the word that flashed through my mind as Paul opened the door to his family's suite in response to my knock, then stood there grinning down at me, one hand in the pocket of his cream-colored chinos, the other clutching a book by someone called Martin Heidegger.**

"Ooh I wonder if its _Being and Time_?" David said with keen interest. "I must question his views on whether or not philosophy has become distorted since Plato."

"Of course you read it," Brad muttered.

**Yeah, you know what the last book I read was? That'd be Clifford . That's right. The big red dog. And okay, I was reading it to a five-year-old, but still. Heidegger. Jeez.**

"How does she know Heidegger?!"

"Because she and I have had intellectual discussions about it," David shrugged, "she only skimmed it for an essay so she didn't fully take it in."

**"All right. Who called Room Service and ordered the pretty girl?" Paul wanted to know.**

"Urgh," everyone groaned. That was just...well _sleazy_.

**Well, okay, that wasn't funny. That was actually sort of sexually harassing, if you think about it. But the fact that the guy saying it was my age, about six feet tall, and olive-complected, with curly brown hair and eyes the color of the mahogany desk in the hotel lobby, made it not so bad.**

"Oh for Christ sake!"

"We're having a word with her how sexual harassment is not okay, no matter who it is and how they look," Andy said sternly.

**Not so bad. What am I talking about? The guy could sexually harass me anytime he wanted to. At least someone wanted to.**

Helen's eye twitched. "I agree," she said to Andy's command, "I hate to think what sort of situation she could put herself in because of this attitude."

**Just my luck it wasn't the guy I wanted.**

"Thank God Jesse has Victorian values," David said, "Or Suze would have been-"

"Please David," Helen interrupted, "I really don't want to think about what could have happened."

**I didn't admit this out loud, of course. What I said instead was, "Ha ha. I'm here for Jack."**

**Paul winced. "Oh," he said, shaking his head in mock disappointment. "The little guy gets all the luck."**

**He held the door open for me, and I stepped into the suite's plush living room. Jack was where he usually was sprawled on the floor in front of the TV. He did not acknowledge my presence, as was his custom.**

"Charming."

**His mother, on the other hand, did acknowledge me: "Oh, hi, Susan. Rick and Paul and I will be on the course all morning. And then the three of us are meeting for lunch at the Grotto, and then we've got appointments with our personal trainers. So if you could stay until we all get back, around seven, we'd appreciate it. Make sure Jack has a bath before changing for dinner. I've laid out a suit for him. It's his birthday, you know. Okay, buh-bye, you two. Have fun, Jack."**

"First," Helen hissed through gritted teeth, "my daughter's name is Susannah, Susannah_, not Susan, not Susanne_, but _Susannah_! Second of all, how are personal trainers more important than your own _child?_! And lastly, how can your child's birthday be such an _afterthought_?!"

**"How could he not?" Paul wanted to know, with a meaningful glance in my direction.**

"Urgh!"

**And then the Slaters left.**

**Jack remained where he was in front of the TV, not speaking to me, not even looking at me. As this was typical Jack behavior, I was not alarmed.**

"Poor kid," Andy muttered.

**I crossed the room, stepping over Jack on my way, and went to fling open the wide French doors that led out onto a terrace overlooking the sea. Rick and Nancy Slater were paying six hundred dollars a night for their view, which was one of the Monterey Bay, sparkling turquoise under a cloudless blue sky. From their suite you could the see the yellow slice of beach upon which, were it not for my well-meaning but misguided stepfather, I would have been whiling away my summer.**

Andy grinned at that.

**It isn't fair. It really isn't.**

Andy then playfully rolled his eyes. Honestly, his children...

**"Okay, big guy," I said, after taking in the view for a minute or two and listening to the soothing pulse of the waves. "Go put on your swim trunks. We're hitting the pool. It's too nice out to stay inside."**

Helen couldn't help but smile. She had a feeling Suze would make a wonderful mother one day.

**Jack, as usual, looked as if I'd pinched him rather than suggested a fun day at the pool.**

**"But why?" he cried. "You know I can't swim."**

"That's not good at all!" Andy cried out. "I ensured all my children learnt by the time they were eight! What on earth are those parents doing?!"

**"Which is exactly," I said, "why we're going. You're eight years old today. An eight-year-old who can't swim is nothing but a loser. You don't want to be a loser, do you?"**

"Susannah!" Helen cried out.

**Jack opined that he preferred being a loser to going outdoors, a fact with which I was only too well acquainted.**

"Poor kid."

**"Jack," I said, slumping down onto a couch near where he lay. "What is your problem?"**

**Instead of responding, Jack rolled over onto his stomach and scowled at the carpet. I wasn't going to let up on him, though. I knew what I was talking about, with the loser thing. Being different in the American public, or even private, educational system is not cool. How Paul had ever allowed this to happen, his little brother's turning into a whiny little wimp you almost longed to slap, I couldn't fathom, but I knew good and well Rick and Nancy weren't doing anything to help rectify the matter. It was pretty much all up to me to save Jack Slater from becoming his school's human punching bag.**

"Knowing Paul Slater," Jake growled, "I doubt he did very little to help his brother."

"Is it me, or does Suze have a need to rescue everyone?" Brad asked. "There always seems to be someone that she rescues in these diaries."

"My child has a hero complex," Helen groused.

**Don't ask me why I even cared. Maybe because in a weird way, Jack reminded me a little of Doc, my youngest stepbrother, the one who is away at computer camp. A geek in the truest sense of the word, Doc is still one of my favorite people. I have even been making a concerted effort to call him by his name, David ... at least to his face.**

David beamed at this while his brothers glared jealously at him. They weren't that bad! They cared about Suze too!

**But Doc is, almost, able to get away with his bizarre behavior because he has a photographic memory and a computer-like ability to process information. Jack, so far as I could tell, possessed no such skills.**

"I don't think there is anyone who has the same skills as David," Jake said.

**In fact, I had a feeling he was a bit dim. So really, he had no excuse for his eccentricities.**

"Some could argue the same with you," Helen raised an eyebrow.

**"What's the deal?" I asked him. "Don't you want to learn how to swim and throw a Frisbee, like a normal person?"**

**"You don't understand," Jack said, not very distinctly, into the carpet. "I'm not a normal person. I ****-**** I'm different than other people."**

"How?"

**"Of course you are," I said, rolling my eyes. "We're all special and unique, like snowflakes. But there's Different, and then there's Freakish. And you, Jack, are going to turn Freakish, if you don't watch out."**

"Susannah!" Helen shrieked. "Honestly, did I not teach you anything about tact?!"

**"I ****-****I already am freakish," Jack said.**

"God that poor kid," Andy said, "I don't know how often I said it but my heart really does go out to that little guy."

**But he wouldn't elaborate, and I can't say I pressed too hard, trying to find out what he meant. Not that I imagined he might like to drown kittens in his spare time, or anything like that. I just figured he meant freakish in the general sense. I mean, we all feel like freaks from time to time. Jack maybe felt like one a bit more often than that, but then, with Rick and Nancy for parents, who wouldn't? He was probably constantly being asked why he couldn't be more like his older brother, Paul. That would be enough to make any kid feel a little insecure. I mean, come on. Heidegger? On summer vacation?**

Everyone smiled or sniggered at Suze's little inner monologue there. She was entirely correct but her wording was just amusing.

**Give me Clifford, any day.**

Everyone chuckled at that.

**I told Jack that worrying so much was going to make him old before his time. Then I ordered him to go and put on his swimsuit.**

"Kid doesn't stand a chance," Brad muttered sympathetically.

**He did so, but he didn't exactly hurry, and when we finally got outside and onto the brick path to the pool, it was almost ten o'clock. The sun was beating down hard, though it wasn't uncomfortably hot yet. Actually, it hardly ever gets uncomfortably hot in Carmel, even in the middle of July. Back in Brooklyn, you can barely go outdoors in July, it's so muggy. In Carmel, however, there is next to no humidity, and there's always a cool breeze from the Pacific...**

Helen sighed blissfully. She loved summer in Carmel.

**Perfect date weather, actually. If you happened to have one. A date, I mean. Which of course I don't.**

Everyone rolled their eyes again.

**And probably never will, at least with the guy I want, if things keep up the way they've been going...**

**Anyway, Jack and I were tripping down the brick path to the pool when one of the gardeners stepped out from behind an enormous forsythia bush and nodded to me.**

**This wouldn't have been at all odd, I have actually gotten friendly with all of the landscaping staff, thanks to the many Frisbees I have lost while playing with my charges, except for the fact that this particular gardener, Jorge, who had been expected to retire at the end of the summer, had instead suffered a heart attack a few days earlier, and, well ...**

"Died," everyone finished.

"Please don't let him be a homicidal spirit," Helen added pleadingly.

**Died.**

**Yet there was Jorge in his beige coveralls, holding a pair of hedge clippers and bobbing his head at me, just as he had the last time I'd seen him, on this very path, a few days before.**

"I think it is safe to say Jorge is a decent guy," Andy said reassuringly.

**I wasn't too worried about Jack's reaction to having a dead man walk up and nod at us, since for the most part; I'm the only one I know who can actually see them. The dead, I mean. So I was perfectly unprepared for what happened next...**

**Which was that Jack ripped his hand from mine and, with a strangled scream, ran for the pool.**

Everyone's eyes widened. "No way..." Brad murmured, "No freaking way!"

**This was odd, but then, so was Jack. I rolled my eyes at Jorge, then hurried after the kid, since I am, after all, getting paid to care for the living. The whole helping-out-the-dead thing has to play second fiddle so long as I'm on the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort time clock. The ghosts simply have to wait. I mean, it's not as if they're paying me. Ha! I wish.**

"It would have to be a very well paid job, like six figures at the minimum," Andy muttered.

**I found Jack huddled on a deck chair, sobbing into his towel. Fortunately, it was still early enough that there weren't many people at the pool yet. Otherwise, I might have had some explaining to do.**

"I'm too used to weird things happening round Suze," Jake shook his head.

**But the only other person there was Sleepy, high up in his lifeguard chair. And it was pretty clear from the way Sleepy was resting his cheek in one hand that his shutters, behind the lenses of his Ray Bans, were closed.**

"You better not sleep when you're on duty!" Andy chided his eldest.

**"Jack," I said, sinking down onto the neighboring deck chair. "Jack, what's the matter?"**

**"I ... I t-told you already," Jack sobbed into his fluffy white towel. "Suze . . . I'm not like other people. I'm like what you said. A ... a ... freak."**

"Jeeze, that poor kid."

**I didn't know what he was talking about. I assumed he was merely continuing our conversation from the room.**

"I doubt it."

**"Jack," I said. "You're no more a freak than anybody else."**

**"No," he sobbed. "I am . Don't you get it?" Then he lifted his head, looked me straight in the eye, and hissed, "Suze, don't you know why I don't like to go outside?"**

"We have an idea," David said.

**I shook my head. I didn't get it. Even then, I still didn't get it.**

"Oh come on!" Brad shouted. "Even I have an idea what's going on!"

"Does he realise-"

"Let him work it out himself," Jake grinned at David.

**"Because when I go outside," Jack whispered, "I see dead people."**

"And there we have it!" Andy said sadly, "Another mediator. That poor, poor kid."

"How curious," David said thoughtfully, "so far Suze is the only female mediator we have encountered. I wonder if it's a genetic trait more commonly found in males like hair loss..."

"We've only met four mediators though," Jake pointed out, "as far as we know there might be hundreds of females and Father D and the kid are a rarity."

"True," David conceded, "I must question Suze about this when we finish the diaries."

"And on that note," Jake said handing the diary to Brad, "that was the end of the entry."


	2. Chapter 2

**I swear that's what he said.**

"Who said what?" Brad blinked.

"Jack said he could see dead people, remember?" David pinched the ridge of his nose. Oh how he wished he had a more intelligent brother.

"Oh yeah," Brad said, "She should be more clear. If anyone read from this point they would have no idea what the hell she's talking about."

"Language, Brad," Andy said automatically.

**He said it just like the kid in that movie said it, too, with the same tears in his eyes, the same fear in his voice.**

A few lips twitched at that. It seemed every so often Suze's life was like a movie.

**And I had much the same reaction as I had when watching the movie. I went, inwardly, freaking crybaby .**

"Susannah!" Helen cried out.

"Oh well," Andy shrugged, "at least it was inwardly."

**Outwardly, however, I said only, "So?"**

"But that isn't much better," Andy added hastily.

**I didn't mean to sound callous. Really. I was just so surprised. I mean, in all my sixteen years, I've only met one other person with the same ability I have, the ability to see and speak with the dead, and that person is a sixty-something-year-old priest who also happens to be principal of the school I am currently attending. I certainly never expected to meet up with a fellow mediator at the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort.**

"It's not the type of place you'd think ghosts would go let alone a mediator," Jake agreed. "But to be honest I don't think Suze was expecting to meet a fellow mediator at _anywhere_."

**But Jack took offense at my "So?" anyway.**

"I would as well if I revealed my deepest, darkest, secret and that's the response I got," Andy said.

**"So?" Jack sat up. He was a skinny little kid, with a caved-in sort of chest, and curly brown hair like his brother's. Only Jack lacked his brother's nicely buff shape, so the curly hair, which looked sublime on Paul, gave Jack the unfortunate appearance of a walking Q-tip.**

"He's eight!" Jake shouted in frustration. "He isn't supposed to be buff!"

"I really worry about what goes on in my daughter's mind," Helen shook her head.

**I don't know. Maybe that's why Rick and Nancy don't want to hang around him. Jack's a little creepy looking, and apparently has frequent dialogues with the dead. God knows it never made me Miss Popularity.**

"Susannah!" Helen cried out in exasperation. "I'm going to need to have a talk to her about how looks don't matter."

**The talking to the dead thing, I mean. I am not creepy looking. In fact, when I am not wearing my uniform shorts, I am frequently complimented on my appearance by the occasional construction worker.**

Everyone rolled their eyes.

**"Didn't you hear what I said?" Jack was depressed, you could tell. I was probably the first person he'd ever told about his unique problem who'd been completely unimpressed.**

Jake couldn't help but snort. That poor kid had no idea who he was dealing.

**Poor kid. He had no idea who he was dealing with.**

Jake stared at the book bewildered that he managed to say that exact same thing as Suze.

**"I see dead people," he said, rubbing his eyes with his fists. "They come up, and start talking to me. And they're dead ."**

"It must be terrifying," Andy said, "I know I would be scared at that age."

**I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees.**

**"Jack," I said.**

**"You don't believe me." His chin started trembling. "No one believes me. But it's true!"**

**Jack buried his face in his towel again. I glanced in Sleepy's direction. Still no sign that he was aware of either of us, much less that he found Jack's behavior at all odd. The kid was murmuring about all the people who hadn't believed him over the years, a list which seemed to include not only his parents, but a whole stream of medical specialists Rick and Nancy had dragged him to, hoping to cure their youngest child of this delusion he has, that he can speak to the dead.**

"Oh," Helen said miserably, "That's...exactly what Susie feared."

**Poor little guy. He hadn't realized, as I had from a very early age, that what he and I can do ... well, you just don't talk about.**

Andy wrapped a comforting arm round his wife.

**I sighed. Really, it would have been too much to ask, apparently, for me to have a normal summer. I mean, a summer without any paranormal incidents.**

"Yes," Brad said simply.

"Brad!" Andy snapped.

"Well it's true!" Brad protested. "She hasn't been able to have anything without a paranormal thing happening!"

"Please don't remind me," Helen moaned.

Suze couldn't even have a normal first day at school.

**But then, I'd never had one of those before in my life. Why should my sixteenth summer be any different?**

Everyone looked down miserably. It wasn't fair.

**I reached out and laid a hand on one of Jack's thin, quivering shoulders.**

"Better," Andy muttered.

**"Jack," I said. "You saw that gardener just now, didn't you? The one with the hedge clippers?"**

**Jack lifted an astonished, tear-stained face from the terry cloth. He stared up at me in wonder.**

"I think Jack will be fine now," David smiled, "after all Suze will teach him how to deal with it now."

**"You ... you saw him, too?"**

**"Yeah," I said. "That was Jorge. He used to work here. He died a couple days ago of a heart attack."**

"And he decided to go back to work?" Brad raised an eyebrow.

"People are creatures of habit," David said, "if you were to die now and come back as a ghost I reckon you would go to school with us, do your workout routine, and sit at the table with us regardless because it is what you do in life."

"Nah," Brad shook his head, "if I was a ghost I would be haunting the girl's locker room."

"Brad!" Andy barked. "I want a five page essay on how to respect women by next week or I will add another week to your grounding sentence."

"Yes Dad," Brad mumbled.

"And please," Helen pleaded, "Don't talk about your death so casually. Not after you've almost been murdered."

**"But how could you- " Jack shook his head slowly back and forth. "I mean, he's . . . he's a ghost."**

**"Well, yeah," I said. "He probably has something he needs us to do for him. He kicked off kind of suddenly, and there may be stuff, you know, he left unfinished. He came up to us because he wants our help."**

**"That's ..." Jack stared at me. "That's why they come up to me? Because they want help?"**

**"Well, yeah," I said. "What else would they want?"**

**"I don't know." Jack's lower lip started to tremble again. "To kill me."**

"God, that poor kid," Andy said, "thank God he found Suze. Now he can learn how to be a mediator and earn a little confidence."

**I couldn't help smiling a little at that one. "No, Jack," I said. "That's not why ghosts come up to you. Not because they want to kill you." Not yet, anyway. The kid was too young to have made the kind of homicidal enemies I had. **

"Why did she have to make homicidal enemies?" Helen moaned into her hands. Andy squeezed her comfortingly. Unable to find the right words that would comfort her right now.

**"They come up to you because you're a mediator, like me."**

**Tears trembled on the edges of Jack's long eyelashes as he gazed up at me. "A ... a what?"**

**Oh, for God's sake, I thought. Why me? I mean, really. Like my life's not complicated enough. Now I have to play Obi Wan Kenobi to this kid's Anakin Skywalker? **

"Let's hope this kid doesn't turn evil," Jake muttered.

**It so isn't fair. When was I ever going to get the chance to be a normal teenage girl, to do the things normal teenage girls like to do, like go to parties and hang out at the beach, and, um, what else?**

**Oh, yeah, date. A date, with the boy I actually like, would be nice.**

"My daughter's obsessed," Helen shook her head, "it's far too unhealthy to constantly worry and think about that."

"I think she's settled down now she has Jesse," David said.

"Yes!" Helen said cheerfully as she clasped her hands together. "She's been so much happier since he has come into her life, and he's the perfect man for her! I couldn't pick out anyone better for her."

**But do I get dates? Oh, no. What do I get instead?**

**Ghosts. Mainly ghosts looking for help cleaning up the messes they made when they were alive, but sometimes ghosts whose sole amusement appears to be making even bigger messes in the lives of the people they left behind. And this frequently includes mine.**

"Sounds like Brad," David muttered to Jake. Jake grinned down at his youngest brother.

**I ask you, do I have a big sign on my forehead that says Maid Service? Why am I always the one who has to tidy up other people's messes?**

"Because you live with three messy boys," Andy grumbled.

**Because I had the misfortune to be born a mediator.**

**I must say, I think I'm way better suited for the job than poor Jack. I mean, I saw my first ghost when I was two years old, and I can assure you, my initial reaction was not fear. Not that, at the age of two, I'd been able to help the poor suffering soul who approached me. But I hadn't shrieked and run away in terror, either.**

"True but she wasn't fearless either," Helen murmured. She remembered clearly how Suze would cling a little tighter to her when they passed certain places. How she would scream at night sometimes. "Those poor children." she whispered.

**It wasn't until later, after my dad, who passed away when I was six, came back and explained it that I began to fully understand what I was, and why I could see the dead, but others, like my mom, for instance, could not.**

**One thing I did know, though, from a very tender age: mentioning to anyone that I could see folks they couldn't? Yeah, not such a hot idea. Not if I didn't want to end up on the ninth floor of Bellevue, which is where they stick all the whackos in New York City.**

Helen inwardly moaned at how a horrible mother she was for Suze to feel like that.

**Only Jack didn't seem to have quite the same instinctive sense of self-preservation I'd apparently been born with. He'd been opening up his trap about the whole ghost thing to anyone who would listen, with the inevitable result that his poor parents didn't want to have anything to do with him. I'd be willing to bet that kids his own age, figuring he was lying to get attention, felt the same way. In a sense, the little guy had brought all his current misfortunes down upon himself.**

"He's a kid!" Andy snapped. "He thought his parents would protect him and help, not abandon him!"

**On the other hand, if you ask me, whoever is up there handing out the mediator badges needs to make a better effort to see that the folks who get awarded the job are mentally up to the challenge. I complain a lot about it, because it has put a significant cramp in my social life, but there is nothing about this whole mediator thing I do not feel perfectly capable of handling...**

"I'm pretty sure it's a genetic thing," David muttered.

**Well, except for one thing.**

"Eh?" Brad mumbled to himself.

**But I've been making a concerted effort not to think about that.**

**Or rather, him .**

"She can't stop thinking about Jesse!" Helen squealed.

**"A mediator," I explained to Jack, "is someone who helps people who have died to move on, into their next life." Or wherever people go when they kick the bucket. But I didn't want to get into a whole metaphysical discussion with this kid. I mean, he is, after all, only eight.**

**"You mean like I'm supposed to help them go to heaven?" Jack asked.**

"That's how Father D would put it," Jake said amused.

**"Well, yeah, I guess." If there is one.**

**"But ..." Jack shook his head. "I don't know anything about heaven."**

"Neither does Suze," Andy grinned.

"She's very good at sending people to hell though," Brad pointed out.

"I doubt she does," Helen argued, "and if she did then it's because they deserve it! Half the ghosts she has encountered had been far too violent for my liking."

**"You don't have to." I tried to think how to explain it to him, then decided showing was better than telling. That's what Mr. Walden, who I had last year for English and World Civ, was always saying, anyway.**

"Teacher's pet," Brad murmured under his breath.

But because he was reading everyone glared at him knowing that he must have insulted Suze.

**"Look," I said, taking Jack by the hand. "Come on. Watch me, and you can see how it works."**

**Jack put the brakes on right away, though.**

**"No," he gasped, his brown eyes, so like his brother's, wild with fear. "No, I don't want to."**

"Scaredy cat," Brad said.

"He. Is. Eight. Years. Old." Helen said slowly with a dirty look.

Brad decided it was best to hide behind the book and keep reading before he burst into flames or worse ends up back in the corner again.

**I yanked him to his feet. Hey, I never said I was cut out for this baby-sitting thing, remember?**

A few amused looks at that. Suze sold herself too short but at the same time she was too blunt for situations like this.

**"Come on," I said again. "Jorge won't hurt you. He's really nice. Let's see what he wants."**

**I practically had to carry him, but I finally got Jack over to where we'd last seen Jorge. A moment later the gardener, or, I should say, his spirit, reappeared, and after a lot of polite nodding and smiling, we got down to business. It was kind of hard, considering that Jorge's English was about as good as my Spanish, which is to say, not good at all, but eventually, I was able to figure out what was keeping Jorge from moving on from this life to his next, whatever that might be: His sister had appropriated a rosary left by their mother for her first grandchild, Jorge's daughter.**

"Some people," Helen huffed, "honestly."

**"So," I explained to Jack, as I steered him into the hotel lobby, "what we have to do is get Jorge's sister to give the rosary back to Teresa, his daughter. Otherwise, Jorge will just keep hanging around and pestering us. Oh, and he won't be able to find eternal rest. Got it?"**

**Jack said nothing. He just wandered behind me in a daze. He had been silent as death during my conversation with Jorge, and now he looked as if someone had whacked him on the back of the head with a Wiffle bat a couple hundred times.**

"I find talking to Suze sometimes does that to you," David said sheepishly, "She knows how to surprise a person."

"You're telling me," Andy said shaking his head in disbelieve.

He'd never forget his second conversation with Suze. He never expected a fifteen year old to be so overprotective of their mother, and determined to make them happy.

**"Come here," I said, and steered Jack into a fancy mahogany phone booth with a sliding glass door.**

**After we'd both slipped through it, I pulled the door shut, then picked up the phone and fed a quarter into the slot. "Watch and learn, grasshopper," I said to him.**

Brad and Jake snorted.

**What followed was a fairly typical example of what I do on an almost daily basis. I called information, got the guilty parry's phone number, then phoned her. When she picked up, and I ascertained that she spoke enough English to understand me, I informed her of the facts as I knew them, without the least embellishment. When you are dealing with the undead, there's no need for exaggeration of any kind. The fact that someone who has died has contacted you with details no one but the deceased could know is generally enough. By the end of our conversation, an obviously flustered Marisol had assured me that the rosary would be delivered, that day, into Teresa's hands.**

"Well that was easy," Helen sighed in relieve, "maybe this will be a nice account of a lovely holiday teaching Jack."

"Anyone want to remind Mom what I dug up that week?" Brad murmured to his brothers.

"Nah, let Mom have this delusion for now," Jake muttered back.

**End of conversation. I thanked Jorge's sister and hung up.**

**"Now," I explained, to Jack, "if Marisol doesn't do it, we'll hear from Jorge again, and we'll have to resort to something a little more persuasive than a mere phone call. But she sounded pretty scared. It's spooky when a perfect stranger calls you and tells you she's spoken to your dead brother, and that he's mad at you. I bet she'll do it."**

"Or call the cops, " Andy pointed out.

**Jack stared up at me. "That's it?" he asked. "That's all he wanted you to do? Get his sister to give the necklace back?"**

"Poor kid," Jake shook his head, "if he thinks it's that easy he has no clue what can happen to him."

Helen shuddered and Andy tightened his arm around her.

**"Rosary," I corrected him. "And yes, that was it."**

**I didn't think it was important to add that this had been a particularly simple case. Usually, the problems associated with people speaking from beyond the grave are a little more complicated and take a lot more than a simple phone call to settle. In fact, oftentimes fisticuffs are involved. I had only just recently recovered from a few broken ribs given to me by a group of ghosts who hadn't appreciated my attempts to help them into the afterlife one little bit, and had, in fact, ended up putting me in the hospital.**

Everyone flinched at the reminder.

**But Jack had plenty of time to learn that not all the undead were like Jorge. Besides, it was his birthday.**

**I didn't want to bum him out.**

"At least she knew that much," Helen murmured. She was actually quite proud of her daughter, Suzie managed to reach out and help someone, and now, hopefully Jack will blossom into a wonderful young man.

**So instead, I slid the phone booth door open again and said, "Let's go swimming."**

**Jack was so stunned by the whole thing he didn't even protest. He still had questions, of course . . .questions I answered as patiently and thoroughly as I could. In between questions, I taught him to freestyle.**

**And I don't want to brag, or anything, but I have to say that, thanks to my careful instructions and calming influence, by the end of the day Jack Slater was acting like, and even swimming like, a normal eight-year-old.**

Helen and Andy exchanged proud smiles at that.

**I'm not kidding. The little dude had completely lightened up. He was even laughing . It was as if showing him that he had nothing to fear from the ghosts who had been plaguing him his whole life had lifted from him his fear of ... well, everything. It wasn't long before he was running around the pool deck, doing cannonballs off the side, and annoying all the doctors' wives who were trying to tan themselves in the nearby lounge chairs. Just like any other eight-year-old boy.**

"Wow..."

"That is a remarkable transformation Suze managed to bring about," David agreed.

**He even struck up a conversation with a group of other kids who were being tended by one of my fellow sitters. And when one of them splashed water in Jack's face, instead of bursting into tears, as he would have done the day before, Jack splashed the kid back, causing Kim, my fellow sitter, who was treading water beside me, to ask, "My God, Suze, what did you do to Jack Slater? He's acting almost...normal ."**

**I tried not to let my pride show.**

"Like a proud Momma, was she?" Brad smirked.

"Oh definitely," Jake agreed, "She puffed up like Dad does whenever he goes to Dave's Parent's Night."

**"Oh, you know," I said with a shrug. "I just taught him to swim, is all. I guess that gave him some confidence."**

**Kim watched as Jack and another boy, just to be irritating, did double cannonballs into a group of little girls, who shrieked and then tried to hit the boys with their foam floaties.**

**"God," Kim said. "I'll say. I can't believe it's even the same kid."**

"Neither could I," Jake agreed.

**Neither, it became apparent, could Jack's own family. I was teaching him the backstroke when I heard someone whistle, low and long, from the far side of the pool. Jack and I both looked up and saw Paul standing there, looking all Pete Sampras-y in white and holding a tennis racquet.**

The boys rolled their eyes. They were getting far too used to Suze admiring men for their liking.

**"Well, would you look at that," Paul drawled. "My brother, in a pool. And enjoying himself, no less. Has hell frozen over, or something?"**

Andy and Helen frowned a little at that. There was something rather unsettling about how Paul said that.

**"Paul," Jack screamed. "Watch me! Watch me!"**

"Poor kid," Jake said, "he desperately wanted his brother's attention and the git leaves him as soon as he can."

**And the next thing any of us knew, Jack was racing through the water toward his brother. I wouldn't exactly call what Jack was doing a proper crawl, but it was a close enough imitation of it to pass, even in an older brother's eyes. And if it wasn't pretty, there was no denying the kid was staying afloat. You had to give him that.**

"Well it is his first day swimming," Andy pointed out.

**And Paul did. He squatted down and, when Jack's head bobbed up just beneath him, he reached down and pushed it under again. You know, in a playful way.**

"Hmm..." Jake had done the same to his own brothers but when he watched this from the lifeguard chair there had been something rather cruel. It could just be because he didn't want someone to drown on his watch or it could be because he really doesn't like Paul near his sister...but still...

**"Congrats, champ," Paul said, when Jack resurfaced. "I never thought I'd live to see the day you wouldn't be afraid to get your face wet."**

**Jack, beaming, said, "Watch me swim back!" and began to thrash through the water to the other side of the pool. Again, not pretty, but effective.**

**But Paul, instead of watching his brother swim, looked down at me, standing chest-high in the clear blue water.**

"Keep your eyes off of my sister's chest," Jake growled.

**"All right, Annie Sullivan," he said. "What have you done to Helen?"**

"Eh?" Brad asked confused.

"Never mind," David shook his head, "let's just carry on. I want to get to a part that doesn't have Paul in it."

"What do you have against him?" Andy asked curiously.

"Nothing...just there's something about him that creeps me out."

**I shrugged. Jack had never mentioned his brother's feelings on the whole I see dead people thing, so I didn't know if Paul was aware of Jack's ability or if he, like his parents, thought it was all in the kid's head. One of the points I'd tried to impress upon Jack was that the fewer people, particularly adults, who knew, the better. I had forgotten to ask if Paul knew.**

Jake and David narrowed their eyes at this.

**Or, more important, believed.**

**"Just taught him how to swim is all," I said, sweeping some of my wet hair from my face.**

**I won't lie or anything and say I was embarrassed for a hottie like Paul to see me in my swimsuit. I look a lot better in the navy blue one-piece suit the hotel forces us to wear than I do in those heinous shorts.**

Helen rolled her eyes.

**Plus my mascara is totally the waterproof kind. I mean, I'm not an idiot.**

**"My parents have been trying to get that kid to swim for six years," Paul said. "And you do it in one day?"**

"Never underestimate Suze's stubborn nature," Jake grinned.

**I smiled at him. "I'm extremely persuasive," I said.**

**Yeah, okay, I was flirting. So sue me. A girl has to have some fun.**

"Yeah just not with him," Jake muttered.

**"You," Paul said, "are nothing short of a miracle worker. Come have dinner with us tonight."**

"Isn't it supposed to be Jack's birthday dinner?" Andy asked furiously. "I'm sure the kid doesn't want to see his brother flirting with his babysitter over a dinner that is meant to be for him!"

**All of a sudden, I didn't feel like flirting anymore.**

"Good," Andy, Jake, and Helen muttered.

**"Oh, no, thank you," I said.**

**"Come on," Paul said. I have to say that he looked exceptionally fine in his white shirt and shorts. They brought out the deepness of his tan, just like the late afternoon sunlight brought out the occasional strand of gold in his otherwise dark brown curls.**

"Urgh!"

**And a tan wasn't all Paul had that the other hottie in my life didn't: Paul also happened to have a heartbeat.**

"But Jesse will soon!" Helen asserted.

**"Why not?" Paul was kneeling by the side of pool, one dark forearm resting across an equally dark knee. "My parents will be delighted. And it's clear my brother can't live without you. And we're going to the Grill. You can't turn down an invitation to the Grill."**

"I'm sure you can," Helen rolled her eyes, "the food at the Grill isn't even that good."

"That's because the chief isn't as good as Dad," David said.

Andy grinned and messed up David's hair. "Thanks," he said really pleased with himself.

"Suck up," Brad grumbled.

**"I'm sorry," I said. "I really can't. Hotel policy. The staff aren't supposed to mingle with the guests."**

"Is it?" Helen asked Jake.

"Well not really since we have to look after them and chat to them if they start a conversation," Jake shrugged, "but I'm pretty sure dating a guest is against regulations."

**"Who said anything about mingling?" Paul wanted to know. "I'm talking about eating. Come on. Give the kid a birthday treat."**

"Now he remembers the kid," Andy muttered.

**"I really can't," I said, flashing him my best smile. "I have to go. Sorry."**

**And I swam over to where Jack was struggling to lift himself onto a huge pile of floaties he'd collected, and pretended to be too busy helping him to hear Paul calling to me.**

"Good," Jake muttered.

**Look, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I said no because the whole thing would just be too Dirty Dancing , right? Summer fling at the resort, only with the roles reversed: you know, the poor working girl and the rich doctor's son, nobody puts Baby in the corner, blah blah blah. That kind of thing.**

Helen looked appalled at Suze's flippant behaviour towards one of her favourite films ever. Back in the day when they didn't just watch detective films Helen tried to instil a love of the classic chick flicks, Gina had loved it, Suze looked bored within ten minutes.

**But that's not it. Not really. For one thing, I'm not even technically poor. I mean, I'm making ten bucks an hour here, plus tips. And my mom is a TV news anchorwoman, and my stepdad has his own show, too.**

**And okay, sure, it's only local news, and Andy's show is on cable, but come on. We have a house in the Carmel Hills.**

**And okay, yeah, the house is a converted hundred-and-fifty-year-old hotel. But we each have our own bedroom, and there are three cars parked in the driveway, none of which are propped up on cinderblocks. We don't exactly qualify for food stamps.**

"We get it, we're rich," Brad rolled his eyes.

"Count your blessings," Andy said, "If I hadn't been lucky enough to attract the attention of the network we wouldn't be where we are."

**And it isn't even that other thing I mentioned, about there being a policy against staff mingling with the guests. There isn't any such policy.**

**As Kim felt obligated to point out to me a few minutes later.**

**"What is your glitch, Simon?" she wanted to know. "That guy's got the hots for you, and you went completely Red Baron on him. I never saw anybody get shot down so fast."**

"She'd never seen that F-ah err, Adam friend of Suze try get a date," Brad's confidence in the joke faltered as he caught himself before calling Adam a faggot once again in front of his father.

**I busied myself scooping a drowning ant off the surface of the water. "I'm, um, busy tonight," I said.**

"Yeah right," Jake snorted.

**"Don't give me that, Suze." Although I had never met Kim before we'd started working together, she goes to Carmel Valley High, the public school my mother is convinced is riddled with drug addicts and gangbangers, we'd gotten pretty close due to our mutual dissatisfaction at being forced to rise so early in the morning for work. "You aren't doing anything tonight. So what's with the anti-aircraft fire?"**

**I finally captured the ant. Keeping it cupped in my palm, I made my way toward the side of the pool.**

**"I don't know," I said as I waded. "He seems nice and all. The thing is"- I shook my hand out over the side of the pool, setting the ant free ****-**** "I kind of like somebody else."**

"Jesse!" Helen said excitedly. "She likes Jesse!"

"We know!" the two elder, and very much exasperated, brothers said in unison.

**Kim raised her eyebrows. One of them had a little hole in it where she normally wears a gold stud. Caitlin makes her take it out before work, though.**

**"Tell," Kim commanded.**

**I glanced involuntarily up at Sleepy, dozing in his lifeguard's chair. Kim let out a little shriek.**

"What?!" Jake shrieked (in a very manly way), "Ew! God no!"

**"Ew," she cried. "Him? But he's your ****-****"**

"Exactly! So why did you immediately jump to that disgusting idea?!"

**I rolled my eyes. "No, not him . God. Just . . . Look, I just like somebody else, okay? But it's like ... it's a secret."**

**Kim sucked in her breath. "Ooh," she said. "The best kind. Does he go to the Academy?" When I shook my head, she tried, "Robert Louis Stevenson School, then?"**

"He doesn't go to school," David said sadly. He felt it was incredibly unfair on Jesse to be stuck in limbo and not achieve an academic diploma.

**Again, I shook my head.**

**Kim wrinkled up her nose. "He doesn't go to CVHS, does he?"**

"Thankfully, no," Andy muttered.

**I sighed. "He isn't in high school, okay, Kim? I'd really rather ****-****"**

**"Oh, my God," Kim said. "A college guy? You dog. My mom would kill me if she knew I was going with a college guy. "**

"We almost did kill her at first," Andy grinned at the memory, "I'm glad we didn't, she honestly could do worse."

**"He's not in college, either, okay?" I could feel my cheeks growing warm. "Look, the thing is, it's complicated. And I don't want to talk about it."**

"Poor Suze, it is entirely unfair that she is incapable of participating the social ritual of-"

Brad quickly interrupted David by continuing to read.

**Kim looked taken aback. "Well, all right. God. Sorry."**

**But she couldn't leave well enough alone.**

**"He's older, right?" she asked, less than a minute later. "Like way older? That's okay, you know. I went out with an older guy, like, when I was fourteen. He was eighteen. My mom didn't know. So I can totally relate."**

"Somehow I don't think she can," Andy said.

**"Somehow," I said, "I really don't think you can."**

Andy grinned at the fact he said something similar to his stepdaughter.

**She wrinkled her nose again. "God," she said. "How old is he?"**

"About a hundred and seventy years old or so," David grinned.

**I thought about telling her. I thought about going, Oh, I don't know. About a century and a half.**

**But I didn't. Instead I told Jack it was time to go inside, if he was going to have a bath before dinner.**

"Subtle," Jake snorted.

**"Jeez," I heard Kim say as I got out. "That old, huh?"**

"Yes, unfortunately," Helen sighed. "Although he wouldn't be the perfect man for my Susie if he was her age."

**Yeah. Unfortunately. That old.**

"That's it," Brad said dumping the diary into David's lap, "your turn squirt."


	3. Chapter 3

**I don't even really know how it happened. I was being way careful, you know? Careful not to fall in love with Jesse, I mean.**

"That's the problem with love," Andy said dreamily, "it sneaks up on you."

He and Helen stared into one another's eyes. "Urgh, someone fetch me a bucket," Brad grumbled.

David decided for his own sanity's sake he should keep reading.

**And I'd been doing a really good job. I mean, I was getting out and meeting new people and doing new things, just like it says to do in Cosmo. I certainly wasn't sitting around mooning over him or anything.**

The three brothers snorted at the idea of Suze sitting around and mooning over someone.

**And yeah, okay, the majority of guys I have met since moving to California have turned out either to have psychopathic killers stalking them, or were actually psychopathic killers themselves. But that's really not a very good excuse for falling in love with a ghost. It really isn't.**

"I don't know," Jake shrugged, "Suze's taste in men has been terrible until Jesse."

**But that's what happened.**

**I can tell you the exact moment I knew it was all over, too. My battle to keep from falling in love with him, I mean. It was while I was in the hospital, recovering from that severe butt-kicking I mentioned before, the one I got courtesy of the ghosts of four RLS students who had been murdered a few weeks before school let out for the summer.**

"Thanks for the reminder," Helen shuddered now broken from her love sick enchantment. Andy also grimaced at the thought of Suze almost being murdered. Why couldn't she have been maths genius like David? Life would have been so much easier.

**Anyway, Jesse showed up in my hospital room (Why not? He's a ghost. He can materialize anywhere he wants) to express his get-well wishes, which were extremely heartfelt and all, and while he was there, he happened, at one point, to reach out and touch my cheek.**

**That's all. He just touched my cheek, which was, I believe, the only part of me that was not black and blue at the time.**

**Big deal, right? So he touched my cheek. That's no reason to swoon.**

**But I did.**

"Girls," Brad rolled his eyes.

**Oh, not literally. It wasn't like anybody had to wave smelling salts under my nose or anything, for God's sake. But after that, I was gone. Done for. Toast.**

**I flatter myself I've done a pretty good job of hiding it. He, I'm sure, has no idea. I still treat him as if he were . . . well, an ant that has fallen into my pool. You know, irritating, but not worth killing.**

"Susannah!" Helen shrieked, appalled at her daughter's behaviour.

"Sounds like how she treats Brad," Jake smirked.

"Shuddup! You get the same treatment to!"

**And I haven't told anyone. How can I? No one, except for Father Dominic, back at the Academy, and my youngest stepbrother, Doc, has any idea Jesse even exists. I mean, come on, the ghost of a guy who died a hundred and fifty years ago, and lives in my bedroom? If I mentioned it to anyone, they'd cart me off to the loony bin faster than you can say **_**Stir of Echoes .**_

"No we wouldn't," Andy smiled fondly, "we would have consulted Father Dominic and then probably send her to therapy while looking into medication."

"Not the reassurance I think Suze was looking for, Dad," Jake rolled his eyes.

**But it's there. Just because I haven't told anyone doesn't mean it isn't there, all the time, lurking in the back of my mind, like one of those 'N Sync songs you can't get out of your head.**

Everyone shuddered at that. '_N Sync_, urgh.

**And I have to tell you, it makes the idea of going out with other guys seem like ... well, a big waste of time.**

"It is," Helen agreed, "especially since Jesse is the one!"

**So I didn't jump at the chance to go out with Paul Slater (though if you ask me, having dinner with him **_**and**_** his parents **_**and**_** his little brother hardly qualifies as going out). **

"It doesn't," Jake agreed, "but somehow I can't see it stopping that creep classing it as a date."

**Instead, I went home and had dinner with my own parents and brothers. Well, stepbrothers, anyway.**

"What?!" Jake shouted indignantly. "Dad gets the parents label but the moment Suze calls us brothers she corrects herself! How is that fair?!"

"Hey, chill out," Andy ruffled his eldest's hair, "she still called you a brother. It's progress. If there's one thing we've learnt about Suze it' how difficult it is to reach her emotionally."

"Still," Jake mumbled, "I think of her as my sister..."

"I know, and she thinks you're annoying, so you're halfway there," Andy said cheerfully.

"Dad, you're not funny!"

**Dinner in the Ackerman household was always this very big deal ... until Andy started working on installing the hot tub. Since then, he has slacked off considerably in the culinary department, let me tell you. And since my mom is hardly what you'd call a cook, we've been enjoying a lot of takeout lately. I thought we had hit rock bottom the night before, when we'd actually ordered from Peninsula Pizza, the place Sleepy works nights as a delivery guy.**

"There's nothing wrong with Peninsula Pizza," Jake sniffed indignantly.

"I think it was just that I made Suze tip you that made her think it was rock bottom," Andy smirked. "Though I do agree with Suze, takeout is a terrible idea, I should ensure next time I do a project like this I have prepared proper meals to cook in the future."

"We're not getting another hot tub," Helen said firmly.

Although it would be nice to have one without Brad's hair in it.

**But I didn't know how bad it could get until I walked in that night and saw a red-and-white bucket sitting in the middle of the table.**

Helen rolled her eyes.

**"Don't start," my mother said when she noticed me.**

**I just shook my head. "I guess if you peel the skin off, it's not that bad for you."**

"How can she not like the skin?" Brad demanded. "That's the best part of the chicken."

"She's just fussy and a rather health conscious," Helen said. "She's not big on greasy food."

**"Give it to me," Dopey said, glopping semi-congealed mashed potatoes onto his plate. "I'll eat your skin."**

"Ew," David gagged.

**I could hardly control my gag reflex after that offer, but I managed, and I was reading the nutritional literature that came with our meal ****-**** "The Colonel has never forgotten the delicious aromas that used to float from his mother's kitchen on the plantation back when he was a boy" ****-**** when I remembered the tin box, the contents of which had also been advertised as having a delicious aroma.**

"Weird," Brad muttered.

"Not really Brad," David said, "after all the two containers had two shared words on it. It would of course trigger the memory as the suggested context is similar."

"I can tell you now," Brad yawned, "that I did not dig up a box of KFC."

**"Hey," I said. "So what was in that box you guys dug up?"**

**Dopey made a face. "Nothing. Bunch of old letters."**

"I despair of you," David said.

"I'm not interested in that stuff," Brad shrugged, "Now if it was gold, we would be talking."

**Andy looked sadly at his son. The truth is, I think even my stepfather has begun to realize what I have known since the day I met him: that his middle son is a bohunk.**

"Susannah!"

"I wasn't thinking that," Andy said exasperated with his children's petty insults, "I was thinking how it was a waste of Brad's potential that he wasn't to show interest in these academic finds."

"I'm not David," Brad grumbled.

**"Not just a bunch of old letters, Brad," Andy said. "They're quite old, dated around the time this house was built ****-**** 1850. They're in extremely poor condition ****-**** falling apart, actually. I was thinking of taking them over to the historical society. They might want them, in spite of the condition. Or" ****-**** Andy looked at me ****-**** "I thought Father Dominic might be interested. You know what a history buff he is."**

**Father Dom is a history buff, all right, but only because, as a mediator, like me, he has a tendency to run into people who have actually lived through historical events like the Alamo and the Lewis and Clark expedition. You know, folks who take the phrase **_**been there, done that**_** to a whole new level.**

"Must be so fascinating," David said dreamily.

**"I'll give him a call," I said as I accidentally dropped a piece of chicken into my lap, where it was immediately vacuumed up by the Ackermans' enormous dog, Max, who maintains a watchful position at my side during every meal.**

"Max," David mumbled fondly.

"I do wish Suze wouldn't feed him so often," Andy said, "the vet is worried about his weight again."

**It was only when Dopey chortled that I realized I'd said the wrong thing. **

"Git," Jake glared at his middle brother.

"Oh come on! It wasn't normal!" Brad protested.

**Never having been a normal teenage girl, it is sometimes hard for me to imitate one. And normal teenage girls do not, I know, give their high school principals calls on any sort of regular basis.**

"True but Father Dominic isn't exactly a normal high school principal," Helen pointed out, "after all he hears all his students' confessions."

Brad paled dramatically as he realised that meant Father Dominic knew about the first time he...well _did stuff_...urgh, he wanted to die.

**I glared at Dopey from across the table.**

**"I was going to call him anyway," I said, "to find out what I'm supposed to do with the leftover cash from our class trip to Great America."**

"Sure," Andy said in a jokingly disbelieving voice.

**"I'll take it," Sleepy joked. Why did my mother have to marry into a family of comedians?**

"I suppose I was bored," Helen smiled while the Ackerman men grinned at one another.

**"Can I see them?" I asked, pointedly ignoring both my stepbrothers.**

"We noticed."

**"See what, honey?" Andy asked me.**

**For a moment I forgot what we were talking about. **_**Honey**_** ? Andy had never called me **_**honey**_** before. **

"I hadn't?"

**What was going on here? Were we ****- **** I shudder to think it ****- **_**bonding ?**_

"Well, what's wrong with that?!"

**Excuse me, I already have one father, even if he is dead. He still pops by to visit me all too often.**

"I'm not trying to replace her father!" Andy shouted indignantly. "I'm just trying to be a good stepfather!"

"I know honey," Helen said soothingly as she patted Andy's arm, "Suze is just be over-defensive with her emotions again. She doesn't like to let people in remember?"

**"I think she means the letters," my mother said, apparently not even noticing what her husband had just called me.**

"Because it isn't that big of a deal," Helen rolled her eyes. Her daughter, the Drama Queen of Carmel.

**"Oh, sure," Andy said. "They're in our room."**

**"Our room" is the bedroom Andy and my mother sleep in. I try never to go in there, because, well, frankly, the whole thing grosses me out. Yeah, sure, I'm glad that my mom's finally happy, after ten years of mourning the death of my dad. But does that mean I want to actually see her in bed with her new husband, watching West Wing ? No thank you.**

"Teenagers," Helen and Andy muttered while the boys nodded in agreement with Suze's words.

**Still, after dinner, I steeled myself and went in there. My mom was at her dressing table taking off her makeup. She has to go to bed very early in order to be up in time for her stint on the morning news.**

**"Oh, hi, sweetie," my mom said to me in a dazed, I'm-busy kind of way. "They're over there, I think."**

**I looked where she pointed on top of Andy's dresser and found the metal box Dopey had dug up along with a lot of other guy-type stuff, like loose change and matches and receipts.**

"You should really clean those up," Helen muttered with a pointed look at her very sheepish husband.

"I will soon," Andy promised.

He won't. He never does, Helen sighed heavily.

**Anyway, Andy had tried to clean the box up, and he'd done a pretty good job of it. You could read almost all the writing on it.**

Andy puffed up in pride at that.

**Which was kind of unfortunate, because what the writing said was way politically incorrect. **_**Try new Red Injun cigars!**_** It urged. There was even a picture of this very proud-looking Native American clutching a fistful of cigars where his bow and quiver ought to have been. **_**The delicious aroma will tempt even the choosiest smoker. As with all our products, quality assured**_** .**

"And this is partly why the Native Americans were almost extinct," David grumbled, "And why even today they suffer a terrible reputation. Stupid propagandists."

**That was it. No surgeon general's warning about how smoking can kill. Nothing about foetal birth weight.**

"People didn't know back then," David said sadly, "they were terribly ignorant over these sort of things."

**Still, it was kind of strange how advertising from before they had TV ****- ****before they even had radio ****- ****was still basically the same as advertising today. Only, you know, now we know that naming your product after a race of people will probably offend them.**

"Probably."

**I opened the box and found the letters inside. Andy was right about their poor condition. They were so yellowed that you could hardly peel them apart without having pieces crumble off. They had, I could see, been tied together with a ribbon, a silk one, which might have been another color once, but was now an ugly brown.**

**There was a stack of letters, maybe five or six in all, in the box. I can't tell you, as I picked up the first one, what I thought I'd see. But I guess a part of me knew all along what I was going to find.**

**Even so, when I'd carefully unfolded the first one and read the words **_**Dear Hector**_** , I still felt like somebody had snuck up behind me and kicked me.**

"Why?" Brad asked stupidly.

"Jesse's real name is Hector, remember?" David reminded him.

"Oh yeah...wow, so that meant that body-"

"I really rather not think about that now," Helen interrupted, "David please continue."

**I had to sit down. I sank down into one of the armchairs my mom and Andy keep by the fireplace in their room, my eyes still glued to the yellowed page in front of me.**

**Jesse. These letters were to Jesse.**

"So she probably shouldn't have read them," Andy said.

**"Suze?" My mom glanced at me curiously. She was rubbing cream into her face. "Are you all right?"**

"She looked like she had seen a ghost," Helen smiled at the irony of her statement.

**"Fine," I said in a strangled voice. "Is it okay ... is it okay if I just sit here and read these for a minute?"**

**My mom began to slop cream onto her hands. "Of course," she said. "You're sure you're all right? You look a little ... pale."**

**"I'm great," I lied. "Just great."**

"Lies," Brad said, "you should stop believing her, Mom."

_**Dear Hector**_**, the first letter said. The handwriting was beautiful ****- ****loopy and old-fashioned, the kind of handwriting Sister Ernestine, back at school, used. **

"I now cannot like the writer on principal," Brad declared.

"Moron," Jake rolled his eye good naturedly.

**I could read it quite easily, despite the fact that the letter was dated May 8,1850.**

**Eighteen fifty! That was the year our house had been built, the first year it was in business as a boarding house for travellers to the Monterey Peninsula area. The year ****- ****I knew from when Doc and I looked it up ****- **** that Jesse, or Hector (which is his real name; can you imagine? I mean, Hector ) had mysteriously disappeared.**

"Hector," Brad shook his head.

"Mysteriously disappeared," Jake snorted.

**Though I happen to know there hadn't been anything mysterious about it. He'd been murdered in this very house ... in fact, in my bedroom upstairs. Which is why, for the past century and a half, he's been hanging out there, waiting for ...**

"Waiting for what?" Andy asked.

"For Suze of course!" Helen said excitedly. "They're soul mates."

The brothers all rolled their eyes but decided not to comment. They valued their lives after all.

**Waiting for what?**

**Waiting for you, said a small voice in the back of my head. A mediator, to find these letters and avenge his death, so he can move on to wherever it is he's supposed to go next.**

"Jesse doesn't seem like the avenging type," David said, "I think originally he stayed because he wanted his family to know the truth."

"And when they were gone he couldn't leave either," Andy realised sadly.

It was the parents he felt sorry for in this. He wouldn't be able to cope if he lost one of his boys and died never knowing whether they were alive or not.

**The thought struck me with terror. Really. It made my hands go all sweaty, even though it was cool in my mom and Andy's room, what with the air conditioning being on full blast. The back of my neck started feeling prickly and gross.**

"She doesn't want to lose Jesse," Helen said gleefully.

"We got it Mom," Jake rolled his eyes.

**I forced myself to look back down at the letter. If Jesse was meant to move on, well, then I was just going to have to help him do it. That's my job, after all.**

"I doubt Jesse would want to leave," Jake rolled his eyes again.

**Except that I couldn't help thinking about Father Dom. A fellow mediator, he had admitted to me a few months ago that he had once had the misfortune to fall in love with a ghost, back when he'd been my age. Things hadn't worked out ****- ****how could they? ****- **** and he'd become a priest.**

**Got that? A **_**priest**_** . Okay? That's how bad it had been. That's how hard the loss had been to get over. **_**He'd become a priest**_** .**

"I think that had little to do with his loss and more to do with his conviction as a Catholic though," Andy said rather amused, "after all Father Dominic never said whether his priesthood had something to do with his broken heart."

**Frankly, I don't see how I could ever become a nun. For one thing, I'm not even Catholic. And for another, I don't look very good with my hair pulled back. Really. That's why I've always avoided ponytails and headbands.**

Everyone burst out into hysterical laughter. "Suze...a nun..." Jake wheezed out. "God help Sister Ernestine..."

"Her hair? She's worried about her hair?" Brad choked out between giggles.

"The poor Monsignor wouldn't know what hit him," Andy wiped a few stray tears away.

"Honestly," Helen giggled, "even if Jesse left Suze wouldn't become a nun. She would just do something about it."

**Stop it, I said to myself. Just stop it and read.**

**I read.**

**The letter was from someone called Maria. I don't know much about Jesse's life before he died ****-**** he's not exactly big on discussing it ****- **** but I do know that Maria de Silva was the name of the girl Jesse had been on his way to marry when he'd disappeared. Some cousin of his. I'd seen a picture of her once in a book. She was pretty hot, you know, for a girl in a hoop skirt who lived before plastic surgery. Or Maybelline.**

More rolled eyes at that.

**And you could tell by the way she wrote that she knew it, too. That she was hot, I mean. Her letter was all about the parties she'd been to, and who had said what about her new bonnet. Her bonnet , for crying out loud. I swear to God, it was like reading a letter from Kelly Prescott, except that it had a bunch of **_**hithers**_** and **_**alacks**_** in it, and no mention of Ricky Martin. Plus a lot of stuff was spelled wrong. Maria may have been a babe, but it was pretty clear, after reading her letters, she hadn't won too many spelling bees back at ye olde schoolhouse.**

"So basically she's a vain, spoilt, idiotic little girl?" Jake summed up.

"Jake," Andy glared at his son.

"What?" Jake asked innocently. "Suze said she was like Kelly and that is exactly what Kelly is."

"Yes but it isn't nice to say it out loud."

**What struck me, as I read, was the fact that it really didn't seem possible that the girl who had written these letters was the same girl who had, I was pretty sure, ordered a hit on her fianc****é****. Because I happened to know that Maria hadn't wanted to marry Jesse at all. Her dad had arranged the whole thing. Maria had wanted to marry this other guy, this dude named Diego, who ran slaves for a living. A real charming guy. In fact, Diego was the one I suspected had killed Jesse.**

"Most likely," David agreed grimly.

**Not, of course, that Jesse had ever mentioned any of this ****- **** or anything at all, for that matter, about his past. He is, and always has been, completely tight-lipped on the whole subject of how he'd died. Which I guess I can understand: getting murdered has to be a bit traumatizing.**

"A bit?"

"Susie," Helen shook her head incredulously.

**But I must say it's kind of hard getting to the bottom of why he's still here after all this time when he won't contribute at all to the conversation. I had had to find out all of this stuff from a book on the history of Salinas County that Doc had dug up out of the local library.**

"Which come to think of it is a bit of an invasion of Jesse's privacy isn't it?"

"Not really," David shrugged, "it is after all public knowledge and public property. Not like this diary which is a real invasion of Suze's privacy."

Helen and Andy grimaced. They couldn't tell David off for this or his assistance in invading Jesse's privacy since they hadn't set good examples themselves.

**So I guess you could say that I read Maria's letters with a certain sense of foreboding. I mean, I was pretty much convinced I was going to find something in them that was going to prove Jesse had been murdered ... and who'd done it.**

**But the last letter was just as fatuous as the other four. There was nothing, nothing at all to indicate any wrongdoing of any kind on Maria's part . . . except for maybe a complete inability to spell the word fiancé. And really, what sort of crime is that?**

"A horrible one," David muttered, "it's a butchery of the English language."

**I folded the letters carefully again and stuck them back into the tin, realizing, as I did so, that the back of my neck, as well as my hands, was no longer sweating. Was I relieved that there was nothing incriminating here, nothing that helped solve the mystery of Jesse's death?**

"Yes," Brad stated.

**I guess so. Selfish of me, I know, but it's the truth. All I knew now was what Maria de Silva had worn to some party at the Spanish ambassador's house. Big deal. Why would anybody stick letters as innocuous as that into a cigar box and bury them? It made no sense.**

"I sense another paranoid nutcase," Jake said.

"Oh please don't!" Helen pleaded. "I hope only the body is what happened that summer. No murderous ghosts or the like."

"And should I worry that you managed to hone your senses for paranoid nutcases?" Andy asked.

"High school girls are insane," was all Jake's reply.

**"Interesting, aren't they?" my mother said when I stood up.**

"Not really," Brad groused.

**I jumped about a mile. I'd forgotten she was even there. She was in bed now, reading a book on how to be a more effective time manager.**

"Why were you reading that?" David asked interestedly. "You're already an effective time manager."

"I was looking for teaching tips for Brad," Helen smiled, "I'm certain the only reason he failed English and Spanish was because he didn't manage his time well enough."

Brad flushed grateful that someone didn't think he was an idiot. Though quite frankly he hated English and didn't understand his essay questions for it.

**"Yeah," I said, putting the letters back on Andy's dresser. "Really interesting. I'm so glad I know what the ambassador's son said when he saw Maria de Silva in her new silver gauze ball gown."**

The boys snorted. "She can talk," Brad muttered.

**My mom looked up at me curiously through the lenses of her reading glasses. "Oh, did she mention her last name somewhere? Because Andy and I were wondering. We didn't see it. De Silva, did you say?"**

**I blinked. "Um," I said. "No. Well, she didn't say. But Doc and I ... I mean, David, he told me about this family, the de Silvas, that lived in Salinas around that time, and they had a daughter called Maria, and I just ..." My voice trailed off as Andy came into the room.**

"At least she told me the truth for once," Helen murmured.

**"Hey, Suze," he said, looking a little surprised to see me in his room, since I'd never set foot in there before. "Did you see the letters? Neat, huh?"**

**Neat. Oh my God. Neat.**

"What's wrong with neat?"

"No one says neat anymore Dad," Brad rolled his eyes, "Jeeze keep up with the times."

**"Yeah," I said. "Gotta go. Good night."**

**I couldn't get out of there fast enough. I don't know how kids whose parents have been married multiple times deal with it. I mean, my mother's only remarried once, and to a perfectly nice man. But still, it's just so **_**weird**_** .**

"Teenagers."

**But if I'd thought I could retreat to my room to be alone and think things over, I was wrong. Jesse was sitting on my window seat.**

"As usual," Brad muttered.

**Sitting there looking like he always looked: totally hot, in the white open-necked shirt and black toreador pants he habitually wears ****-**** well, it's not like you can change clothes in the afterlife ****- ****with his short dark hair curling crisply against the back of his neck, and his liquid black eyes bright beneath equally inky brows, one of which bore a thin white scar...**

The gagging and moaning was done at minimum since they all actually liked Jesse.

**A scar that, more times than I like to admit, I'd dreamed of tracing with my fingertips.**

Brad mimed vomiting and Jake screwed his nose up in disgust. Honestly there were just some things you don't want to know.

**He looked up when I came in ****- ****he had Spike, my cat, on his lap ****-**** and said, "This book is very difficult to understand." He was reading a copy of First Blood , by David Morrell, which they based the movie Rambo on.**

"What Rambo was based on that boring book?!"

"Yes," David said patronisingly, "and would you believe me when I tell you Harry Potter was based on seven books?"

"Shuddup!"

"David, can the attitude," Andy chided, "and Brad, stop telling your brothers to shut up."

**I blinked, trying to rouse myself from the dazed stupor the sight of him always seemed to put me in for a minute or so.**

**"If Sylvester Stallone understood it," I said, "I would think you could."**

Jake and David snorted but withheld the comments on Brad's intelligence.

**Jesse ignored that. "Marx predicted that the contradictions and weaknesses within the capitalist structure would cause increasingly severe economic crises and deepening impoverishment of the working class," he said, "which would eventually revolt and seize control of the means of production . . . which is precisely what happened in Vietnam. What induced the U.S. government to think that they were justified in involving themselves in the struggle of the people of this developing nation to find economic solidarity?"**

Brad quietly moaned his confusion which out of pity and not wanting to be told off again, his brothers ignored.

**My shoulders sagged. Really, is it too much to ask that I be able to come home from a long day of work and relax? Oh, no. I have to come home and read a bunch of letters written to the love of my life by his fianc****é****, who, if I am correct, had him killed a hundred and fifty years ago.**

**Then, as if that is not bad enough, he wants me to explain the Vietnam War.**

That received some chuckles.

**I really have to start hiding my textbooks from him. The thing is, he reads them and actually manages to retain what they say, and then applies that to other things he finds to read around the house.**

"So that's where my books keeping disappearing to!" David cried out. "Next time Suze should enforce a ask first policy. I'm sure they can leave a note for me."

"Geek," Brad rolled his eyes.

"And proud of it," David grinned.

**Why he can't just watch TV, like a normal person, I do not know.**

"Yes, because I want to pay a higher electricity bill," Andy grumbled.

**I went over to my bed and collapsed onto it, face first. I was, I should mention, still wearing my horrible shorts from the hotel. But I couldn't bring myself to care what Jesse thought about the size of my butt at that particular moment.**

"Le gasp!" Brad cried out. "Suze doesn't care what Jesse thinks she looks like?"

"It must be love!" Helen cried out in a sing song voice.

"Or she's just really exhausted," Andy said.

**I guess it must have showed. Not my butt, I mean, but my general unhappiness with the way my summer was going.**

**"Are you all right?" Jesse wanted to know.**

"He's so sweet," Helen crooned, "caring about her constantly."

**"Yes," I said, into my pillows.**

**Jesse said, after a minute, "Well, you don't seem all right. Are you sure nothing is wrong?"**

**Yes, something is wrong, I wanted to shriek at him. I just spent twenty minutes reading a bunch of private correspondence from your ex-fianc****é****, and might I add that she seems like a terrifically boring individual? How could you have ever been stupid enough to have agreed to marry her? Her and her stupid **_**bonnet **_**?**

"Jealous, much?"

"She's right though," David pointed out, "how can someone as intelligent and compassionate as Jesse be interested in someone as stupid and shallow as Maria?"

"Arranged marriage, obviously," Helen said.

**But the thing is, I didn't want Jesse to know I'd read his mail. I mean, we're basically roommates and all, and there are certain things you just don't do. For instance, Jesse is always tactfully not around whenever I am changing and bathing and whatnot. And I am very careful to stock up on food and litter for Spike, who, unlike a normal animal, actually seems to prefer ghost company to human. He only tolerates me because I feed him.**

"Sounds almost like a married couple," Andy grumbled.

**Of course, Jesse has, in the past, felt no compunction about materializing in the backseats of cars in which I happened to have been making out with someone.**

Jake and Brad couldn't help but burst into sniggers at that.

**But I know Jesse would never read my mail, of which I get only a limited amount, mostly in the form of letters from my best friend Gina, back in Brooklyn. And I have to admit, I felt guilty for reading his, even though it was almost two hundred years old and there certainly wouldn't have been anything about me in it.**

"I thought Suze hadn't told Gina about Jesse?" Jake said.

"Perhaps she did later on in her letters," Helen shrugged.

**What surprised me was that Jesse, who is, after all, a ghost, and can go anywhere without being seen ****- ****except by me and Father Dom, of course, and now, I guess, by Jack ****- **** didn't know about the letters. Really, he seemed to have no idea both that they'd been found and that, just moments before, I'd been downstairs, reading them.**

"I don't think Jesse spies on us," Andy said. Well he hoped Jesse didn't because that would have just been awkward.

"He just spies on Suze," Helen said cheerfully.

**But then, First Blood is pretty engrossing, I suppose.**

Brad grunted his disagreement while David nodded his.

**So instead of telling him what was really wrong with me ****- **** you know, anything about the letters, and especially anything about the whole **_**I'm in love with you, only where can it go? Because you're not even alive and I'm the only one who can see you, and besides, it's clear you don't feel the same way about me. Do you? Well, do you ?**_

"Yes he does!" Helen squealed.

"My ears," Brad whimpered.

**Thing ****- **** I just said, "Well, I met another mediator today, and I guess that kind of weirded me out."**

"Kind of?"

**And then I rolled over and told him about Jack.**

**Jesse was very interested and told me I ought to call Father Dom with the news. What I wanted to do, of course, was call Father Dom and tell him about the letters. But I couldn't do that with Jesse in the room, because of course he'd know I'd been prying in his personal affairs, which, given his whole secrecy thing about how he'd died, I doubted he'd appreciate.**

"No I don't think he will."

**So I said, "Good idea," and picked up the phone and dialed Father D's number.**

**Only Father D didn't answer. Instead, a woman did. At first I freaked out, thinking Father Dominic was shacking up. But then I remember that he lives in a rectory with a bunch of other people.**

Everyone chuckled at that.

**So I went, "Is Father Dominic there?" hoping it was only a novice or something and would go away and get him without comment.**

**But it wasn't a novice. It was Sister Ernestine, who is the assistant principal of my high school, and who of course recognized my voice.**

"Bugger!" Jake said.

**"Susannah Simon," she said. "What are you doing calling Father Dominic at home at this hour? Do you know what time it is, young lady? It is nearly ten o'clock!"**

"Are people no longer allowed to have confessions these days?" Andy grumbled. He didn't like that nun after what he read. "I thought Father Dominic had an open door policy for any time."

"Ten o'clock is late?" Brad asked disgusted.

**"I know," I said. "Only-"**

**"Besides, Father Dominic isn't here," Sister Ernestine went on. "He's on retreat."**

"And he left Sister Ernestine in charge?!" Brad yelped alarmed.

**"Retreat?" I echoed, picturing Father Dominic sitting in front of a campfire with a bunch of other priests, singing Kumbaya My Lord and possibly wearing sandals.**

Once more laughter ensured. It took quite a while to calm down after that.

**Then I remembered that Father Dominic had mentioned that he would be going on a retreat for the principals of Catholic high schools. He'd even given me the number there, in case there was some kind of ghost emergency and I needed to reach him. I didn't count discovering a new mediator as an emergency, however . . . though doubtless Father Dom would. So I just thanked Sister Ernestine, apologized for disturbing her, and hung up.**

"She should have just hung up straight away," Brad said sagely.

Andy couldn't be bothered to scold him on his rude behaviour because quite frankly he would have done the same.

**"What is a retreat?" Jesse wanted to know.**

**So then I explained to him what a retreat is, but the whole time I was sitting there thinking about the time he'd touched my face in the hospital and wondering if it had been because he just felt sorry for me or if he actually liked me (as more than just as a friend ****- ****I know he likes me as a friend) or what.**

"Girls," Brad rolled his eyes.

**Because the thing is, even though he's been dead for a hundred and fifty years, Jesse is really an extreme hottie ****- **** much hotter even than Paul Slater ... or maybe I just think so because I'm in love with him.**

**But whatever. I mean, he really is like someone straight off the WB. He even has nice teeth for a guy born before they invented fluoride, very white and even and strong-looking. I mean, if there were any guys at the Mission Academy who looked even remotely like Jesse, going to school wouldn't seem at all like the massive waste of time it actually is.**

**But what good is it? I mean, him looking so good, and all? He's a ghost . I'm the only one who can see him. It's not like I'll ever be able to introduce him to my mother, or take him to the prom, or marry him, or whatever. We have no future together .**

**I have to remember that.**

**But sometimes it's really, really hard. Especially when he's sitting there in front of me, laughing at what I'm saying, and petting that stupid, smelly cat. Jesse was the first person I met when I moved to California, and he became my first real friend here. He has always been there when I needed him, which is way more than I can say for most of the living people I know. And if I had to choose one person to be marooned on a desert island with, I wouldn't even have to think about it: of course it would be Jesse.**

"Aww!"

"Urgh!"

"I hope this is the end of the depressing rant."

**This is what I was thinking as I explained about retreats. It was what I was thinking as I went on to explain what I knew about the Vietnam War, and then the eventual fall of communism in the former Soviet Union. It was what I was thinking as I brushed my teeth and got ready for bed. It was what I was thinking as I said good night to him and crawled under the covers and turned out the light. It was what I was thinking as sleep overcame me and blissfully blotted out all thought whatsoever . . . the time I spend sleeping being the only time, lately, when I can escape thoughts of Jesse.**

**But let me tell you, it came back in full force when, just a few hours later, I woke with a start to find a hand pressed over my mouth.**

"What?"

**And, oh yeah, a knife held to my throat.**

"WHAT?!"

"That's the end of the entry," David said weakly, terrified of his stepmother's fury.

"Andy, read it, now!" Helen barked.

Andy hurriedly ripped the diary out of David's hand and fumbled for a moment to find the right page. Then he began to read.


	4. Chapter 4

**Being a mediator, I am not unaccustomed to being woken in, shall we say, a less than gentle manner.**

"Yes but there's a difference from the boys' well meaning screaming mother and a psycho holding a knife to your throat!" Helen shrieked.

**But this was a lot less gentle than usual. I mean, usually when someone wants your help, they go out of their way not to antagonize you . . . which waving a knife around has a tendency to do.**

Helen moaned quietly to herself.

**But as soon as I opened my eyes and saw who this knife-wielding individual was, I realized that probably what she wanted was not my help. No, probably what she wanted was to kill me.**

This did nothing for Helen's nerves.

**Don't ask me how I knew. Undoubtedly those old mediator instincts at work.**

The boys snorted but didn't laugh or make a comment, since they were pretty sure their stepmother would have killed them, if they did.

**Well, and the knife was a pretty significant indicator.**

**"Listen to me, you stupid girl," Maria de Silva hissed at me. **

"Stupid girl? _Stupid girl_?! You could talk Miss I Can't Spell for Toffee!" Helen snarled. "Now get your stupid knife away from my daughter's throat!"

**Maria de Silva-Diego , I should say, since at the time of her death, she was married to Felix Diego, the slave-runner. I know all this from that book Doc got out of the library called My Monterey , a history of Salinas County from 1800 to 1850. There'd even been that portrait of Maria in it.**

**Which was how I happened to know who was trying to kill me this time.**

**"If," Maria hissed, "you don't get your father and brother to stop digging that hole" ****-**** um, step father and step brother, I wanted to correct her,**

"This isn't the time to go into technicalities!" Andy hissed at the book. Good Lord, did all of his children have to be so stubborn?

**Only I couldn't, on account of the hand over my mouth ****- ****"I'll make you sorry you were ever born. Got that?"**

Helen's eye twitched at that.

**Pretty tough talk from a girl in a hoop skirt. Because that's what she was. A girl.**

"Really?" David asked interested. "Because I was under the impression Maria died in her old age of-"

"Now's not the time, David!" Helen interrupted her youngest.

**She hadn't been when she'd died. When she had died, around the turn of the century ****-**** last century, of course, not this one ****- ****Maria de Silva Diego had been around seventy or so.**

**But the ghost on top of me appeared to be my own age. Her hair was black, without a hint of gray, and she wore it in these very fancy ringlets on either side of her face. She appeared to have a lot going on in the jewellery department. There was this big fat ruby hanging from a gold chain around her long, slender neck ****- ****very Titanic and all ****-**** and she had some heavy-duty rings on her fingers.**

"There's a knife at her throat and all she could think about is Maria's jewellery?"

"Woman," Jake shrugged to David. As if that explained it all.

**One of them was cutting into my gums.**

"Oh!"

**That's the thing about ghosts, though ****- **** the thing that they always get wrong in the movies. When you die, your spirit does not take on the form your body had at the moment you croaked. You just don't ever see ghosts walking around with their guts spilling out, or their severed head in their hands, or whatever. If you did, Jack might have been justified in being such a little scaredy cat.**

Everyone shuddered at that.

**But it doesn't happen that way. Instead, your ghost appears in the form your body had when you were at your most vital, your most alive.**

"But Suze had mediated some spirits looking about sixty or something," Brad pointed out.

"Some people feel more alive when they're sixty something," Andy shrugged, "Like Father Dominic."

"Can you just read?!" Helen shrieked.

**And I guess for Maria de Silva, that was when she was sixteen or so.**

"Vanity thy name is Maria now," Jake murmured.

**Hey, it was nice she had an option, you know? Jesse hadn't been allowed to live long enough to have much of a choice. Thanks to her.**

**"Oh, no, you don't," Maria said, the backs of her rings scraping against my teeth in a manner I would really have to describe as unpleasant. "Don't even think about it."**

"Think about what?" Brad asked.

"Calling Jesse, I think," David replied.

**I don't know how she'd known, but I had been considering ramming my knees into her spine. The knife blade pressing against my jugular soon dissuaded me of that plan, however.**

"Or that," David blinked. Helen merely just whimpered at that.

**"You're going to make your father stop digging back there, and you're going to destroy those letters, understand, little girl?" Maria hissed. "And you aren't going to say a word about them ****-**** or me ****-****to Hector. Am I making myself clear?"**

"Well she wasn't going to tell us anything in the first place," Jake groused.

**What could I do? She had a knife to my throat. And there was nothing in her manner at all reminiscent of the Maria de Silva who'd written those idiotic letters. This chick was not gushing about her new bonnet, if you get my drift. I hadn't any doubt at all that she not only knew how to use that knife, but that she fully intended to do so, if provoked.**

"Foul bitch," Jake hissed.

**I nodded to show her that I was perfectly willing, under the circumstances, to follow her orders.**

**"Good," Maria de Silva said. And then she lifted her fingers from my mouth. I could taste blood.**

Helen tightened her hold onto the sofa arm and all four Ackerman males glowered at the diary.

**She had straddled me ****-**** which accounted for all the lacy petticoat in my face, tickling my nose ****- ****and now she looked down at me, her pretty features twisted into an expression of disgust.**

"I know we're disgusted with you as well," Jake muttered.

**"And they said for me to look out," she sneered. "That you were a tricky one. But you aren't so tricky, are you? You're just a girl. A stupid little girl."**

"Well she's just doomed herself by underestimating Suze," Jake grinned.

**She threw back her head and laughed.**

"Bitch," Helen growled to herself.

**And then she was gone. Just like that.**

**As soon as I felt like I could move again, I got out of bed and went into my bathroom, where I turned on the light and looked at my reflection in the mirror above my sink.**

Helen shuddered. "She can't even feel safe in her own home" she cried, "Nothing I could do will ever help her."

Andy shifted and then pulled Helen to him. He laid there on the sofa with Helen curled up against him silently crying against his shirt. He felt dreadful that Suze had been threatened in the bedroom he had lovingly built for her. He had brought her to that house, he had dug up that box, and he was the one that was going to dig up Jesse's body. His precious little girl was in danger because of _him_.

It took him a moment to hold back his own tears and clear his throat enough to continue speaking.

**No. It hadn't been a nightmare. There was blood between my teeth where Maria de Silva's ring had cut into me.**

Everyone flinched.

**I rinsed until all the blood was gone, then turned off the bathroom light and came back into my room. I think I was in a daze or something. I couldn't quite register what had just happened. Maria de Silva. Maria de Silva, Jesse's fianc****é****- ****I think it would be safe to say ex-fianc****é****, under the circumstances ****- ****had just appeared in my room and threatened me. Me. Sweet little old me.**

"Sweet?" Brad snorted though it was rather weak. He was rather shaken up, Suze had been threatened in her own bedroom.

**It was a lot to process, especially considering it was, oh, I don't know, four in the morning?**

**And yet it turned out I was in for yet another late-night shock. No sooner had I stepped from the bathroom than I noticed someone was leaning against one of the posts to the canopy over my bed. Only it wasn't just someone, it was Jesse. And when he saw me, he straightened up.**

"Thank God," Helen breathed, "he would look after her now."

**"Are you all right?" he asked, worriedly. "I thought I ... Susannah, was somebody just here?"**

"He knows," Jake glared at the book, "he knew it was Maria and he's avoiding the topic."

**Uh, your knife-wielding ex-girlfriend, you mean?**

**That's what I thought. What I said was, "No."**

"Susannah!"

**Okay. Don't start with me. **

Andy couldn't help but grin at that. It's as if she knew her mother would end up reading this.

**The reason I didn't tell him had nothing to do with Maria's threat.**

**No, it was the other thing Maria had said. About telling Andy to quit digging in the backyard. Because that could mean only one thing: that there was something buried in the backyard Maria didn't want anybody to find.**

**And I had a feeling I knew what that something was.**

**I also had a feeling that that something was the reason Jesse had been hanging around the Carmel Hills for so long.**

"I doubt it," David said, "I'm sure there are other reasons."

**I should have blurted this all out to Jesse, right? I mean, come on: he had a right to know. It was something that very directly concerned him.**

"Very true, so why does Suze lie to him?" Jake asked knowingly.

**But it was also something that, I was fairly sure, was going to take him away from me forever.**

"Ah..."

**Yeah, I know: if I really loved him, I'd have been willing to set him free, like in that poem that's always on those posters with the seagulls flying in the wind: If you love something, set it free. If it was meant to be, it will come back to you .**

"Very true," Helen's voice came out muffled against Andy's shirt, "after all I let you go and you came back each and every time."

"And Jesse will come back to Suze every time," Andy smiled softly.

**Let me tell you something. That poem is stupid, all right? And it so totally does not apply in this situation. Because once Jesse gets set free, he is never coming back to me. Because he won't be able to. Because he'll be in heaven, or another life, or whatever.**

"Or maybe he gets reincarnated and that's how he's alive now!" David cried out excitedly.

"Maybe," Jake grinned.

**And then I'll have to become a nun.**

The brothers all snorted.

**God. God , everything sucks.**

The brothers then all snickered at the irony.

**I crawled back into bed.**

**"Look, Jesse," I said, pulling the covers up to my chin. I had on a T-shirt and boxers, but, you know, no bra or anything. Not that he could tell, in the dark and all, but you never know. "I'm really tired."**

"I don't think Jesse noticed," Brad muttered.

"He better not," Jake murmured back.

**"Oh," he said. "Of course. But ... You're sure there wasn't anyone in here? Because I could swear I - "**

"He knows," everyone agreed.

**I waited expectantly for him to finish. Just how would he end that sentence? I could swear I heard the sweet dulcet tones of the woman I once loved? I could swear I smelled her perfume - which, by the way, was of orange blossoms?**

"I really don't think Jesse was in love with Maria," Helen said into Andy's shirt, "I'm certain it's an arranged marriage. It was the nineteenth century after all."

**But he didn't say either of those things. Instead, looking really confused, he said, "Sorry," and disappeared, exactly the way his ex-girlfriend had disappeared. In fact, you'd think they might have run into each other, wouldn't you, out there on the spiritual plane, with all of this materializing and dematerializing?**

"I'm pretty sure it won't work like that," David murmured thoughtfully. "I wonder if I could experiment on it..."

**But apparently not.**

**I won't lie and tell you that I dropped back off to sleep right away. I didn't. I was really, really tired, but my mind just kept repeating what Maria had said, over and over. What on earth was she so hot and bothered about, anyway? Those letters didn't have anything the least bit incriminating in them. I mean, if it's true that she had Jesse iced so she could marry her boyfriend Diego instead of him.**

"Paranoid psycho," Jake stated. "I knew my senses were right."

**And if those letters were so important, why hadn't she had them destroyed properly all those years ago? Why were they buried in our backyard in a cigar box?**

"Because Maria is paranoid," Jake said firmly, "her undoing obviously."

**But that wasn't what was really bothering me. What really bothered me was the fact that she wanted me to get Andy to stop digging altogether. Because that could only mean one thing:**

**There was something even more incriminating back there.**

**Like a body.**

**And I didn't even want to think about whose.**

"I didn't either but that didn't stop me from digging one up," Brad groused.

**And when I woke up again a few hours later, after finally managing to nod off, I still didn't want to think about it.**

**But one thing I did know: I was not going to ask Andy to stop digging (like he'd even listen to me if I did), nor was I going to destroy those letters. No freaking way.**

"I wouldn't have listened," Andy agreed sheepishly, "and I'm glad she's taking a stand. As pathetically written those letters were, they are still part of our local history."

**In fact, I took personal possession of them, just in case, telling Andy that I'd deliver them to the historical society myself. I figured they'd be safe there, in case old Maria Diego got up to anything. Andy looked surprised, but not enough actually to ask me what I was up to. He was too busy yelling at Dopey for shovelling in the wrong place.**

"Suze's interest in history always surprises me," Andy explained, "She never pays attention when I talk about these things and yet she's remarkably knowledgeable in these things."

"A ghost thing," David pointed out, "that and, no offense Dad, you sort of make it boring."

It was Helen's turn to comfort a rather distraught Andy. He was boring?

**When I got to the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort that morning, it was to be greeted by Caitlin with an accusatory, "Well, I don't know what you did to Jack Slater, but his family asked that you be assigned to watch him for the rest of their stay ... until Sunday, actually."**

"How's that accusatory?" Helen asked curiously.

"She was jealous that Suze was working with a family known to tip heavily," Jake explained, "she thought Suze did some major sucking up with...err...well Paul."

"Really?" Helen glowered at the book. She didn't like Caitlin that much and not just because she wanted Jake to marry Gina one day.

**I wasn't surprised. Nor did I mind, particularly. The Paul factor was troubling, of course, but now that I knew the reason behind Jack's odd behavior, I genuinely liked the kid.**

**And he, it became clear, the moment I set foot inside his family's suite, was wild about me. No more lying on the floor in front of the TV for him. Jack was in his swimsuit and ready to go.**

"Sweet," Helen smiled now feeling cheered up.

**"Can you teach me the butterfly today, Suze?" he wanted to know. "I've always wanted to know how to do the butterfly."**

"Wasn't he scared of the water before?" Brad said sceptically.

"He was scared of the ghosts not the water," David corrected him, "I'm sure like anyone he dreamed of doing normal things."

**"Susan,"**

"Susannah," Helen corrected.

**his mother said to me, in a whispered aside, right before she ran off to her hair appointment (neither Paul nor his father were around, much to my relief, having had a seven-o'clock tee time). "I can't thank you enough for what you've done for Jack. I don't know what you said to him yesterday, but he is like a different child. I have never seen him so happy. You know, he really is the most remarkably sensitive person. Such an imagination, too. Always thinking he's seeing . . . well, dead people. Has he mentioned this to you?"**

No one could resist the smile knowing that Suze helped a kid become happy. Especially one that was obviously neglected emotionally.

**I said nonchalantly that he had.**

**"Well, we've been at our wits' end. We must have had thirty different doctors look at him, and no one - **_**no one**_** - seemed able to get through to him. Then you came along, and ..." Nancy Slater looked down at me with carefully made-up blue eyes. "Well, I don't know how we'll ever be able to thank you, Susan."**

"Susannah!"

**You could start, I thought, by calling me by my right name. But I didn't really care. I just said, "No problem, Mrs. Slater," and went and got Jack and headed with him back to the pool.**

"Woman isn't worth correcting anyway," Andy muttered. "Not after what she put her kid through."

**Jack was like a different kid. There was no denying that. Even Sleepy, roused from his semi permanent doze by Jack's happy splashing, asked me if that was the same boy he'd seen me with the morning before, and when I told him it was, actually looked incredulous for a second or two before going back to sleep.**

"Jake!"

"I was tired!"

"That's no excuse to sleep on the job, you could have gotten fired, or worse allowed someone to drown on your watch!"

"I'm sorry!"

**The things that had once frightened Jack - basically, everything - no longer seemed to bother him in the least.**

"That's wonderful," Helen smiled. Relieved this entry had taken a happier tone.

**And so when, after burgers at the Pool House, I suggested he and I take the hotel shuttle bus into town, he didn't even protest. He even commented that the plan "sounded like fun."**

"Though I can't help but wonder if the kid got a personality transplant," Brad muttered incredulously.

**Fun. From Jack. Really, maybe mediating isn't my calling at all. Maybe I should be a teacher, or a child psychologist, or something. Seriously.**

"She should," David said, "she's really good with kids as well as really strict, so they would be provided with both loving support and discipline."

**Jack wasn't particularly thrilled, however, when, once we got into town, we headed toward the building that houses the Carmel-by-the-Sea Historical Society. **

"Kids are rarely thrilled about that," Andy grinned. He remembered Jake's and Brad's appalled expressions when he had taken them there.

**He wanted to go to the beach, but when I told him that it was to help a ghost and that we'd go to the beach afterward, he was okay with it.**

**I'm not really a historical society type of gal, but even I have to admit it was kind of cool, looking at all the old photos on the walls of the place, photos of Carmel and Salinas County a hundred years earlier, before all the strip malls and Safeways opened, when it was all just fields dotted with cypress trees, like in that book they made us read in the eighth grade, The Red Pony . They had some pretty cool stuff there - not much, really, from Jesse's time, but a lot from later on, like after the Civil War. Jack and I were admiring something called a stereo-viewer, which is what people used for entertainment before movies, when this untidy-looking bald man came out of his office and peered at us through glasses with lenses as thick as Coke bottle bottoms and said, "Yes, you wanted to see me?"**

**I said we wanted to see someone in charge. He said that was him, and introduced himself as Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D. So I told Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D., **

"Is she going to call him that every time she mentions him?" Brad grimaced.

**Who I was and where I lived, and took the cigar tin from my JanSport backpack (Kate Spade really doesn't go with pleat-front khaki shorts) and showed him the letters...**

**And he freaked out.**

"Okay..."

"It must be exciting for a historian to discover a new document," David said, "like a scientist making a new discovery in their field," he added dreamily.

**I mean it. He freaked out . He was so excited, he told the old lady at the reception desk to hold his calls (she looked up, astonished, from the romance novel she was reading; it was clear that Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D., must not get many calls) and ushered Jack and me back into his private office...**

**Where I nearly had a coronary. Because there, above Clive Clemmings's desk, was Maria de Silva's portrait, the one I had seen in that book Doc had taken out of the library.**

"Damn that must have given her a fright," Jake said.

"Language," was Andy's only reply before he continued reading.

**The painter had done, I realized, an extraordinarily good job. He'd gotten it completely right, down to the artfully ringleted hair and the gold and ruby necklace around her elegantly curved neck, not to mention her snooty expression...**

**"That's her!" I cried, completely involuntarily, stabbing my finger at the painting.**

**Jack looked up at me as if I'd gone mental - which I suppose I momentarily had - but Clive Clemmings only glanced over his shoulder at the portrait and said, "Yes, Maria Diego. Quite the jewel in the crown of our collection, that painting. Rescued it from being sold at a garage sale by one of her grandchildren, can you imagine? Down on his luck, poor old fellow. Disgraceful, when you think about it. None of the Diegos ever amounted to much, however. You know what they say about bad blood. And Felix Diego-"**

"Felix Diego, what?" Helen asked worriedly. "Because if it turns out he's a psychotic mass murderer, I have no doubt Susie will end up meeting him."

"Suze does seem to have that sort of luck," Andy sighed, "I don't like the idea of this at all."

"Garage sale?" David said weakly, looking rather sick. How could an valuable piece of history be so overlooked like that?!

**Dr. Clive had opened the cigar box and, using some special tweezery-looking things, unfolded the first letter. "Oh, my," he breathed, looking down at it.**

**"Yeah," I said. "It's from her." I nodded up at the painting. "Maria de Silva. It's a bunch of letters she wrote to Jesse - I mean, to Hector de Silva, her cousin, who she was supposed to marry, only he -"**

"She needs to be careful it doesn't seem many people know about the nickname," David frowned.

**"Disappeared." Clive Clemmings stared at me. He had to be, if I guessed, in his thirties or so - despite the very wide spot of bare scalp along the top of his head - and though by no means attractive, he did not look so utterly repulsive just then as he had before. A look of total astonishment, which certainly does not become many, did wonders for him.**

**"My God," he said. "Where did you find these?"**

**And so I told him again, and he got even more excited, and told us to wait in his office while he went and got something.**

**So we waited. Jack was very good while we did so. He only said, "When can we go to the beach already?" twice.**

"Now that's a good kid," Andy interrupted himself, "those two horrors over there would ask every minute."

Jake and Brad tried to look angelic but failed epically.

**When Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D., came back, he was holding a tray and a bunch of latex gloves, which he told us we had to put on if we were going to touch anything. Jack was pretty bored by that time, so he elected to go back out into the main room to play with the stereo-viewer some more. Only I donned the gloves.**

**But was I glad I did. Because what Clive Clemmings let me touch when I had them on was everything the historical society had collected over the years that had anything whatsoever to do with Maria de Silva.**

**Which was, let me tell you, quite a lot.**

**But the things in the collection that most interested me were a tiny painting - a miniature, Clive Clemmings said it was called - of Jesse (or Hector de Silva, as Dr. Clive referred to him; apparently only Jesse's immediate family ever called him Jesse ... his family, and me, of course) and five letters, in much better condition than the ones from the cigar box.**

"Wow..."

**The miniature was perfect, like a little photograph. People could really paint back in those days, I guess. It was totally Jesse. It captured him perfectly. He had on that look he gets when I'm telling him about some great conquest I had made at an outlet - you know, scoring a Prada handbag for fifty percent off, or something. Like he couldn't care less.**

"Don't blame him at all," Jake muttered as Brad and David nodded in agreement.

**In the painting, which was just of Jesse's head and shoulders, he was wearing something Clive Clemmings called a cravat, which was supposedly something all the guys wore back then, this big frilly white thing that wrapped around the neck a few times. It would have looked ridiculous on Dopey or Sleepy or even Clive Clemmings, in spite of his Ph.D.**

Brad and Jake grinned good naturedly at that.

**But on Jesse, of course, it looked great.**

And then immediately rolled their eyes at that.

**Well, what wouldn't?**

And then wanted to vomit, the charming boys they were.

**The letters were almost better than the painting, though, in a way. That's because they were all addressed to Maria de Silva . . . and signed by someone named Hector.**

"So they weren't close enough for her to use his nickname," Helen observed, "and yet when he first meets Suze he insists on the nickname – it's true love!" she finished in a squeal.

**I pored over them, and I can't say that at the time I felt a lick of guilt about it, either. They were much more interesting than Maria's letters - although, like hers, not the least romantic. No, Jesse just wrote - very wittily, I might add - about the goings-on at his family's ranch and the funny things his sisters did. (It turns out he had five of them. Sisters, I mean. All younger, ranging in age, the year Jesse died, from sixteen to six. **

"Five sisters?!" Brad yelped.

"Poor bloke, I thought I had it bad with one sister," Jake said sympathetically.

**But had he ever mentioned this to me before? Oh, please.) There was also some stuff about local politics and how hard it was to keep good ranch hands on the job what with the gold rush on and all of them hurrying off to stake claims.**

"I wish I could read them," David said wistfully, "I could have improved my essay on the political effects of the Gold Rush if I had those."

**The thing was, the way Jesse wrote, you could practically hear him saying all this stuff. It was all very friendly and chatty and nice. Much better than Maria's braggy letters.**

"I bet he used the correct spelling as well," Andy grinned.

**And nothing was spelled wrong, either.**

They couldn't help it. They all burst out in laughter at that.

**As I read through Jesse's letters, Dr. Clive rattled on about how now that he had Maria's letters to Hector, he was going to add them to this exhibit he was planning for the fall tourist season, an exhibit on the whole de Silva clan and their importance to the growth of Salinas County over the years.**

**"If only," he said wistfully, "there were any of them left alive. De Silvas, I mean. It would be lovely to have them as guest speakers."**

"Shame he didn't live to see Jesse make his comeback," David sighed, "he would have loved it."

**This got my attention. "There have to be some left," I said. "Didn't Maria and that Diego guy have like thirty-seven kids or something?"**

Andy rolled his eyes and Helen shook her head at her daughter's exaggeration.

**Clive Clemmings looked stern. As a historian - and especially a Ph.D. - he did not seem to appreciate exaggeration of any kind.**

**"They had eleven children," he corrected me. "And they are not, strictly, de Silvas, but Diegos. The de Silva family unfortunately ran very strongly to daughters. I'm afraid Hector de Silva was the last male in the line. And of course we'll never know if he sired any male offspring. If he did, it certainly wasn't in Northern California."**

"Unless there is something Suze isn't telling us," Jake said, "I'm pretty sure Jesse has no children."

**"Of course he didn't," I said, perhaps more defensively than I ought to have. But I was peeved. Aside from the obvious sexism of the whole "last male in the line" thing, I took issue with the guy's assumption that Jesse might have been off procreating somewhere when, in fact, he had been foully murdered. "He was killed right in my own house!"**

"Probably not the best thing to say," David winced.

**Clive Clemmings looked at me with raised eyebrows. It was only then that I realized what I had said.**

**"Hector de Silva," Dr. Clive said, sounding a lot like Sister Ernestine when we grew restless during the begats in Religion class, "disappeared shortly before his wedding to his cousin Maria and was never heard from again."**

"And that coupled with Maria's life afterwards doesn't scream foul play?" Jake raised an eyebrow. "Moron." He muttered.

**I couldn't very well sit there and go, Yeah, but his ghost lives in my bedroom, and he told me ...**

**Instead, I said, "I thought the, um, perception was that Maria had her boyfriend, that Diego dude, kill Hector so she didn't have to marry him."**

**Clive Clemmings looked annoyed. "That is only a theory put forward by my grandfather, Colonel Harold Clemmings, who wrote - "**

"Hang on!" Brad interrupted. "If his grandfather wrote the theory then shouldn't he support it?"

"Sadly I think Clive finds his grandfather's theory an embarrassment. Many people who have supported the 'villain' of a historical story are usually called insane until their defence is proven to be accurate. Like King Richard III of England, today he has been cleared and named a hero but before he was-"

"Bored now," Brad said, "Jeeze, what a douche to ignore his grandfather's work just 'cause it's an embarrassment."

"Yes I wonder who that reminds me of," David said sarcastically as he glared at Brad.

**"My Monterey," I finished for him. "Yeah, that's what I meant. That guy's your grandfather?"**

**"Yes," Dr. Clive said, but he didn't look too happy about it. "He passed away a good many years ago. And I can't say that I agree with his theory, Miss, err, Ackerman." I had donated Maria's letters in my stepfather's name, so Dr. Clive, sexist thing that he was, assumed that that was my name, too. **

"It's a natural assumption!" Andy defended the historian. "He wasn't being sexist!"

**"Nor can I say that his book sold at all well. My grandfather was extremely interested in the history of his community, but he was not an educated man, like myself. He did not possess even a B.A., let alone a Ph.D. It has always been my belief - not to mention that of most local historians, with the sole exception of my grandfather - that young Mr. de Silva developed what is commonly referred to as 'cold feet' " - Dr. Clive made little quotation marks in the air with his fingers - "a few days before the wedding and, unable to face his family's embarrassment over his jilting the young woman in such a manner, went off in search of a claim of his own, perhaps near San Francisco..."**

"Intellectual snob," David muttered under his breath. "Freaking traditionalist with no imagination or broad-mindedness to consider any other explanation."

**It's amazing, but for a moment I actually envisioned sinking those tweezery things Clive Clemmings had made me use to turn the pages of Jesse's letters straight into his eyes. If I could have got them past the lenses of those goobery glasses, that is.**

"Susannah!"

**Instead, I pulled myself together and said, with all the dignity I could muster while sitting there in a pair of khaki shorts with pleats down the front, "And do you really believe, in your heart of hearts, Clive, that the person who wrote these letters would do something like that? Go away without a word to his family? To his little sisters, whom he clearly loved, and about whom he wrote so affectionately? Do you really think that the reason these letters turned up in my backyard is because he buried them there? Or do you find it beyond the realm of possibility that the reason they turned up there is because he's buried there somewhere, and if my stepfather digs deep enough, he just might find him?"**

"Go Suze!" David cheered.

**My voice had risen shrilly. I supposed I was getting a little hysterical over the whole thing. So sue me.**

"All right," Brad grinned, "I will."

"Idiot," Jake rolled his eyes.

**"Will that make you see that your grandfather was a hundred percent right ?" I shrieked. "When my stepfather finds Hector de Silva's rotting corpse ?"**

"Oh honey," Andy breathed, "I should have never started that hot tub."

Helen squeezed his arm comfortingly. "It worked out for the best," she reminded him softly.

**Clive Clemmings looked more astonished than ever before. "My dear Miss Ackerman!" he cried.**

**I think he said this because he'd realized, at the exact same moment as I had, that I was crying.**

"Oh Susie," Helen murmured. She wanted to hug her daughter, _now!_

The three brothers exchanged worried looks. Suze rarely ever cried.

**Which was actually pretty strange, because I am not a crier. I mean, yeah, sure, I cry when I bang my head on one of the kitchen cabinet doors or see one of those drippy Kodak commercials or whatever. But I don't, you know, go around weeping at the drop of a hat.**

"Thank God," said all the males in the room that couldn't handle a weeping woman.

**But there I was, sitting in the office of Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D., bawling my eyes out. Good going, Suze. Real professional. Way to show Jack how to mediate.**

"Eh, the kid is just as bad," Brad shrugged.

**"Well," I said in a shaky voice as I stripped off my latex gloves and stood up, "allow me to assure you, Clive, that you are very, very wrong. Jesse - I mean Hector - would never do something like that. That might be what she wants you to believe" - I nodded toward the painting above our heads, the sight of which I was now beginning to hate with a sort of passion - "but it isn't the truth. Jesse - I mean, Hector - isn't . . .wasn't like that. If he'd gotten 'cold feet' like you say" - I made the same stupid quotation marks in the air - "then he'd have called the whole thing off. And, yeah, his family might have been embarrassed, but they'd have forgiven him, because they clearly loved him as much as he loved them, and -"**

"Honestly, you'd think the guy would have picked up on her slip on Jesse's name," Jake shook his head.

"The guy is a moron," David said bluntly, "he can't see past his own glasses."

**But then I couldn't talk anymore, because I was crying so hard. It was maddening. I couldn't believe it. Crying. Crying in front of this clown.**

A few lips twitched in amusement at that.

**So instead I turned around and stormed out of the room.**

"How dignified," Brad smirked.

"You know that word?" David gasped.

"Oi!"

**Not very dignified, I guess, considering that the last thing Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D., saw of me was my butt, which must have looked enormous in those stupid shorts.**

Everyone either snickered or rolled their eyes at that.

**But I got the point across.**

**I think.**

**Of course, in the end, it turned out not to matter. But at the time, I had no way of knowing that.**

"Oh no," Helen moaned, "What happened now?"

**And neither, unfortunately, did poor Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D.**

"That poor man, just because he is an idiot doesn't mean he deserves to die," David said sadly.

"Well on that cheerful note," Andy said, "the entry is over, it's your turn darling."


	5. Chapter 5

After some moving about so Helen was now sitting up and able to hold onto the diary, she cleared her throat, and then began to read.

**God, I hate crying. It's so humiliating. And I swear I hardly ever do it.**

"We know," Jake said.

**I guess, though, that the stress of being assaulted in the dead of night by the knife-wielding ex-girlfriend of the guy I love finally got to me. I pretty much didn't stop crying until Jack, in desperation, bought me a Yoo-hoo from Jimmy's Quick-Mart, on our way down to the beach.**

"Poor kid," Andy grinned. "Surely it is supposed to be the other way round."

**That and a Butterfinger bar soon had me feeling like myself again, and it wasn't long before Jack and I were frolicking in the waves, making fun of the tourists, and placing penny bets on which surfer would be knocked off his board first. We had such a good time that it wasn't until the sun started setting that I realized I had to get Jack back to the hotel.**

"Well that's good," Helen sighed in relieve, "Suze deserves to have some fun."

**Not that anybody had missed us; we discovered when we got there. As I dropped Jack off at his family's suite, his mother popped her head in from the terrace, where she and Dr. Rick were enjoying cocktails, and said, "Oh, it's you, is it, Jack? Hurry and change for dinner, will you? We're meeting the Robertsons. Thank you, Susan, and see you in the morning."**

"It's Susannah!" Helen snapped at the book.

"They didn't even notice their son was missing from the hotel grounds?!" Andy exclaimed horrified.

**I waved and left, relieved that I'd managed to avoid Paul. After my unexpectedly traumatic afternoon, I did not think I could handle a confrontation with Mr. Tennis Whites.**

Brad and Jake snorted at that.

**But my relief turned out to be precipitous, since, as I was sitting in the front seat of the Land Rover, waiting for Sleepy to tear himself away from Caitlin, who seemed to have something terribly urgent to discuss with him just as we were leaving, someone tapped on my rolled-up window. I looked around, and there was Paul, wearing a tie, of all things, and a dark blue sports jacket. I pushed the button that rolled the window down.**

"Big mistake," Brad groused.

"Yeah but he wouldn't leave her until I came over or she spoke to him," Jake pointed out, "though it would be amusing to see him mime."

**"Um," I said. "Hi."**

**"Hi," he said. He was smiling pleasantly. The last of the day's sunlight picked up the gold highlights in his brown curls. He really was, I had to admit, good-looking. Kelly Prescott would have eaten him up with a spoon.**

"I wouldn't say with a spoon," Jake smirked.

Brad glared down at his hands, another reason to hate Paul Slater; he had Kelly as his girlfriend...

**"I suppose you already have plans for tonight," he said.**

"Yes," everyone answered.

**I didn't, of course, but I replied quickly, "Yes."**

"Good," Jake muttered.

**"I figured." His smile was still pleasant. "What about tomorrow night?"**

"Let's just assume she's busy every night," Andy glowered at the book. He didn't like how pushy this boy was.

**Look, I know I'm a freak, all right? You don't have to tell me. There I was, and this totally hot, totally nice guy was asking me out, and all I could think about was a guy who, let's face it, is dead. **

"Actually we think you're making the right decision," David said, "Paul Slater, while he fits social expectations of a good boyfriend with his good looks and wealth, is not appropriate for Suze. He has none of her ideals and compassion."

**All right? Jesse is dead . It's stupid ****- ****stupid, stupid, stupid ****-**** of me to turn down a date with a live guy when the only other guy I have in my life is dead.**

"But not for long," Helen pointed out in delight, "and I prefer the dead one over this boy."

**But that's exactly what I did. I went, "Gee, sorry, Paul. I have plans tomorrow night, too."**

**I didn't even care if it sounded like I was lying. That's how screwed up I am. I just could not drum up the slightest bit of interest.**

"You don't have to be interested in every good looking boy," Andy rolled his eyes.

**But I guess that was a pretty big mistake. I guess Mr. Paul Slater isn't used to girls turning down his invitations to dinner, or whatever. Because he went, no longer smiling pleasantly ****-**** or at all, actually: "Well, that's too bad. It's especially too bad considering the fact that now I guess I'm going to have to tell your supervisor about how you took my little brother off hotel property today without my parents' permission."**

"Is he trying to blackmail my daughter?" Helen snarled.

"Yes," Jake growled. "The arsehole couldn't take no for an answer."

Andy was too disgusted with Paul to correct Jake on his language. What sort of spoilt brat was this jerk?

**I just stared at him through the open window. I couldn't even figure out what he was talking about, at first. Then I remembered the shuttle bus, and the historical society, and the beach.**

**I almost burst out laughing. Seriously. I mean, if Paul Slater thought my getting in trouble for taking a kid off hotel property without his parents' permission was the worst thing that could happen to me ****-**** that had even happened to me today ****-**** he was way, way off base. For crying out loud, a woman who'd been been dead for nearly a hundred years had held a knife to my throat in my own bedroom, not twenty-four hours earlier. Did he really think I was going to care if Caitlin issued me a reprimand ?**

Everyone flinched at the reminder. Sadly that was the sort of thing people were supposed to be scared of, not knife-wielding psychos from the nineteenth century.

**"Go ahead," I said. "And when you tell her, be sure to mention that for the first time in his life, your brother actually had a good time."**

"Good on you Suze," Andy muttered. How could someone use their little brother's happiness as a way to blackmail a girl into going on a date?

**I hit the button to roll up the window ****-**** I mean, really, what was this guy's damage? ****-**** but Paul stuck his hand through it and rested his fingers on the glass. I let go of the button. I mean, I just wanted him to go away, not get maimed for life.**

"Give it five minutes until she tries to maim him," Brad said.

"Nah, my money is on less than five minutes," Jake disagreed.

**"Yeah," Paul said. "I've been meaning to ask you about that. Jack tells me that you told him he's a medium."**

"Oh come on kid, didn't you learn not to tell people this stuff?" Jake asked the diary exasperated.

**"Mediator," I corrected him before I could stop myself. And so much for Jack keeping the whole thing a secret, like I'd advised him to. When was this kid going to learn that going around telling people he can talk to ghosts wasn't going to endear him to anyone?**

"Never."

**"Whatever," Paul said. "I guess you must think making fun of someone who has a mental disorder is pretty amusing."**

"Says the blackmailer," Jake growled, "Suze made his brother happy, and he's using it against her to score a date? I should have run him over when I had the chance."

"Jake!" Andy chided very weakly. He sort of agreed with his son but still! He can't let his son become a murderer.

**I couldn't believe it. I really couldn't. It was like something out of a TV show. Not on the WB, though, or even Fox. It was totally PAX.**

Brad snorted; Jake rolled his eyes, while David pondered why Suze felt the need to make so many popular culture references.

**"I do not think your brother has a mental disorder," I said.**

**"Oh, don't you?" Paul looked all knowing. "He tells you he sees dead people, and you think he's playing with a full deck?"**

"At least he isn't a jerk pressuring young girls into dates with him!" Andy snapped.

**I shook my head. "Jack might be able to see dead people, Paul. You don't know. I mean, you can't prove he can't see dead people."**

"Fantastic argument," Brad snorted.

**Oh, brilliant argument, Suze. Where the hell was Sleepy? Come on, already. Get me out of here.**

"Sorry," Jake said sheepishly, "I was getting a date myself."

**"Suze," Paul said, looking at me all searchingly. "Please. Dead people? You really believe that? You really believe my brother can see ****-**** can speak to – the dead?"**

"Yes," everyone said.

**"I've heard of weirder things," I said. I glanced over at Sleepy. Caitlin was smiling up at him and shaking her blond Jennifer Aniston mane all over the place. Oh my God, enough with the flirting already. Just ask him out and get it over with so I can go ...**

Everyone chuckled at that, especially Jake, who had often thought the same thing with several girls.

**"Yeah, well, you shouldn't be encouraging him," Paul said. "It's about the worst thing you can do, according to his doctors."**

"Oh shut up, you're annoying me," Brad muttered.

**"Yeah?" I was getting kind of pissed off now. I mean, what did Paul Slater know about anything, anyway? Just because his father's a brain surgeon or whatever who can afford a week at the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort doesn't make him right all the time. "Well, Jack seems fine to me. You might even learn a thing or two from him, Paul. At least he has an open mind."**

"And manners, and compassion, and a good heart, the list goes on and on," Andy said.

**Paul just shook his head in disbelief. "What are you saying, Suze? That you believe in ghosts?"**

"Is he only just getting that?" David asked in disbelief.

**Finally, finally, Sleepy said good-bye to Caitlin and turned back toward the car.**

**"Yeah," I said. "I do. What about you, Paul?"**

**Paul just blinked at me. "What about me?"**

**"Do you believe?"**

**His curled upper lip was all the reply I needed. Not caring if I severed his hand, I hit the window button. Paul pulled his fingers out just in time. I guess he thought I wasn't the finger-severing type.**

"What an idiot," Brad snorted.

**Is he ever wrong.**

**Why are boys so difficult? I mean, really. When they aren't drinking directly out of the carton or leaving the toilet seat up, they are getting all offended because you won't go out with them and threatening to rat you out to your supervisor. Hasn't it occurred to any of them that this is not the way to our hearts?**

"Obviously not," Helen rolled her eyes.

Her stepsons however grinned sheepishly as they were guilty for the first two.

**And the problem is, they are just going to keep on doing it, as long as stupid girls like Kelly Prescott keep agreeing to go out with them anyway, in spite of their defects.**

"True," Andy agreed, "which is why that's not the girl for you to marry."

Brad shrugged, he didn't mind, he just wanted to date Kelly and make out with her, not spend the rest of his life with her.

**I sulked all the way home. Even Sleepy noticed.**

"What do you mean even Sleepy noticed? I notice things!"

**"What's with you?" he wanted to know.**

**"That stupid Paul Slater's mad because I won't go out with him," I said, even though I generally make it a policy not to share my personal problems with any of my stepbrothers except, occasionally, Doc, and then only because his IQ is so much higher than mine.**

"Like I want to know," Brad grumbled. Though he really didn't like it that Suze felt that she could confide in a twelve year old over someone her own age.

"Hey! I care!" Jake protested.

"I must admit there are some things I could do without knowing such as the intimate details of her love life," David said uncomfortably.

**"He says he's going to tell Caitlin I took his little brother off hotel property without his parents' permission, which I did, but only to take him to the beach."**

**And to the Carmel-by-the-Sea Historical Society. But I didn't mention that.**

"To be honest I can't see the kid's parents complaining that Suze brought a little culture into his life," Andy muttered.

**Sleepy went, "No kidding? That's pretty low. Well, don't worry about it. I'll smooth things over with Caitlin for you, if you want."**

"Did you?" Helen asked Jake.

"Yeah," Jake said, "Caitlin wasn't impressed but she told me Suze wouldn't lose her job or anything."

**I was shocked. I had only mentioned it because I was feeling so down in the dumps. I hadn't actually expected Sleepy to help , or anything.**

"Oh thanks, maybe next time I should let you sort it out yourself," Jake groused.

**"Really? You really will?"**

**"Sure," Sleepy said with a shrug. "I'm seeing her tonight after I get off from delivering." Sleepy lifeguards by day and delivers pizzas by night. Originally he was saving up for a Camaro. Now he is saving up to get his own apartment, since there are no dorms at the community college he'll be attending and Andy says he isn't going to pay for Sleepy to have his own place unless he pulls his grades up.**

"There was nothing wrong with my grades!"

"Jake you went from being an A-B student to a B-C student in the last couple of months," Andy said exasperated, "I wanted to you to excel not just pass because I know you can do it and make something of yourself. Besides I cannot trust you in a place of your own paid by me, it would never be cleaned and I would have to pay any repairs."

"Thanks," Jake muttered half chastened and half irked.

**I couldn't believe it. I said, "Thanks," in a stunned way.**

**"What's wrong with that Slater guy, anyway?" Sleepy wanted to know. "I thought he'd be just your type. You know, smart and all."**

"It didn't register that she had been blackmailed!" Jake protested under Helen and Andy's glare. "I was tired! I just wanted to go home and have a nap before my delivery shift!"

**"Nothing's wrong with him," I grumbled, fiddling with my seat belt. "I just ... I sort of like someone else."**

**Sleepy lifted up his eyebrows behind his Ray Bans. "Oh? Anyone I know?"**

"But you had time to question Suze about her love life?"

"Well it did register that there was someone who caught Suze's attention enough to reject Paul, and when you consider Suze's last love interest was a psychotic mass murderer, I did feel the need to look into this guy," Jake explained.

**I said shortly, "No."**

**"I don't know, Suze," he said. "Try me. Between the pizza gig and school, I know almost everybody."**

"You might know a face or their name as well as their favourite pizza but I doubt you _know_ them," David raised an eyebrow at his eldest brother.

"Oh shut up!" Jake flushed.

**"You definitely," I said, "do not know this guy."**

"That worried me."

**Sleepy frowned. "Why? Is he some kind of gangbanger?"**

"Fortunately, no," Helen smiled.

**I rolled my eyes. Sleepy has been convinced since almost the day we first met that I am in a gang. Seriously. As if gang members wear Stila. I am so sure.**

"You'd be surprised," Andy said, "so many rich kids have gangs as well these days."

**"Does he live in the Valley?" Sleepy wanted to know. "Suze, I'm telling you right now, if I find out you're going out with a gangbanger from the Valley ****-****"**

**"God," I yelled. "Would you stop? He isn't a gangbanger, and neither am I! And he doesn't live in the Valley. You don't know him, okay? Just forget we had this conversation."**

"What would you have done if she did date a gangbanger?" Andy asked curiously.

"First tell you and Mom, then beat the ever living crap out of him," Jake said, "and if that didn't work I would keep a stern eye on Suze and the guy until I could get the guy done for something."

"Yes because that wouldn't get you into trouble at all," Helen said sarcastically, "I appreciate your care and concern in Suze's wellbeing but there is a line sadly, not just with Suze, but with the law."

Jake just smiled sheepishly.

**See? See what I mean? See why things will never, ever work out between me and Jesse? Because I can't pull him out and go, Here he is, this is the guy I like, and he isn't a gangbanger, and he doesn't live in the Valley .**

"And we'll go 'where is he I can't see him'" Brad grinned.

**I have just got to learn to keep my mouth shut, same as Jack.**

"I disagree, she needs to learn to open up more," Helen grumbled.

**When we got home, we were informed that dinner wasn't ready yet. That was because Andy was waist-deep in the hole he and Dopey had made in the backyard. I went out and looked at it for a while, chewing on my thumbnail. It was very creepy, looking into that hole. Almost as creepy as the prospect of going to bed in a few hours, knowing that Maria was probably going to show up again.**

Everyone either shuddered or flinched at that.

**And that, seeing as how I hadn't done a single thing she'd asked, this time she'd probably cut up a lot more than just my gums.**

Helen paled at the imagery and tightened her hold on the diary.

**It was around then that the phone rang. It was my friend Cee Cee, wanting to know if I cared to join her and Adam McTavish at the Coffee Clutch to drink iced tea and talk bad about everyone we know. I said yes right away because I hadn't heard from either of them in so long. Cee Cee was doing a summer internship at the Carmel Pine Cone (the name of the local newspaper; can you imagine?) and Adam had been at his grandparents' house in Martha's Vineyard for most of the summer. The minute I heard her voice I realized how much I'd missed Cee Cee, and how great it would be to tell her about vile Paul Slater and his tricks.**

A little colour came to back to Helen as she smiled weakly. It was so good to know that Suze had so many good friends.

**But then, of course, I realized I'd have to tell her the part about Paul's little brother, and how he really can speak to the dead, or the story wouldn't have half as much pathos, and the fact is, Cee Cee is not the type who believes in ghosts, or anything, for that matter, that she can't see with her own two eyes, which makes the fact that she goes to Catholic school problematic, what with Sister Ernestine urging us all the time about Faith and the Holy Spirit.**

"Which no one cares about," Brad muttered.

**But whatever. It was better than standing around at home, looking at a giant hole.**

"And being a sitting duck for Maria," Jake mumbled.

**I hurried upstairs and slipped out of my uniform and into one of the cute J. Crew slip dresses I'd ordered and never gotten a chance to wear since I've spent the whole summer in my heinous khaki shorts. No sign of Jesse, but that was just as well, as I wouldn't have known what to say to him anyway. I felt totally guilty for having read his letters, even though at the same time I was glad I had done it, because knowing about his sisters and his problems on the ranch and all made me feel closer to him in a way.**

"And yet it should have come from him personally than a letter he had written to another woman," Andy grimaced.

**Only it was a fake kind of close because he didn't know I knew. And if he had wanted me to know, don't you think he would have told me? But he never wants to talk about himself. Instead, he always wants to talk about things like the rise of the Third Reich and how could we as a country have possibly sat around and let six million Jews get gassed before doing anything about it?**

"He's an intellectual who wants to know about the world since he died," David said admiringly, "He's too curious to think about himself."

"He's a man," Helen said bluntly, "they never like talking about themselves unless it's to boast."

The said men acting offended at that but really if they could help it, they wouldn't talk about anything that involves their emotions.

**You know. Things like that.**

**Actually, some of the things Jesse wants to discuss are very hard to explain. I'd have much rather talked about his sisters. For instance, had he found living with five girls as trying as I find living with three boys? I would imagine probably not, given the reverse toilet seat situation. Did they even have toilets back then? Or did they just go in those nasty outhouses, like on Little House on the Prairie ?**

The boys sniggered at that.

**God, no wonder Maria was in such a bad mood. Well, that and the whole being dead thing.**

They sniggered even more at that.

**Anyway, Mom and Andy let me go out to eat with my friends because there was nothing for dinner anyway. Family meals really weren't the same, anyway, without Doc. I was surprised to find that I actually missed him and couldn't wait for him to come home. He was the only one of my stepbrothers who did not enrage me on any sort of regular basis.**

David looked really touched and had to focus on cleaning his glasses so no one would notice the tears forming in his eyes. No one had told him they missed him that much before. Not even his father. And it was so wonderful to know that someone cared for him and enjoyed his conversational skills like that.

**Even though I couldn't really tell Cee Cee about Paul, I did have a good time. It was good to see her, and Adam, who, of all the boys I know, acts the least like one, though he isn't gay or anything, and actually takes great umbrage if you suggest it. So does Cee Cee, who has been in love with Adam since like forever. I had great hopes that Adam might return her feelings, but I could tell things had kind of cooled off - at least on his part - since he'd been away.**

"Oh dear," Helen said.

Andy just rolled his eyes at the teenage drama while the boys looked rather bored.

**As soon as he got up to go to the bathroom, I asked Cee Cee what was up with that, and she launched into this whole thing about how she thinks Adam met someone in Martha's Vineyard. I have to say, it was kind of nice listening to someone else complain for a while. I mean, my life pretty much sucks and all, but at least I know Jesse's not screwing around on me with some girl in Martha's Vineyard.**

"Even if Jesse was alive I doubt he would be screwing around with another girl," Andy said.

"How did that guy get a girl at all?" Brad grumbled to himself. In his mind Adam will always be a loser.

**At least, I don't think so. Who knows where he goes when he isn't hanging around my room? It could be Martha's Vineyard, after all.**

Everyone snorted at that. "I doubt it," Jake said, "It's likely he's haunting a library or something."

**See? See how this relationship is never going to work?**

"It will," Helen rolled her eyes at her daughter's pessimistic attitude.

**Anyway, Cee Cee and Adam and I hadn't seen each other in a long time, so there were quite a few people we needed to say bad things about, primarily Kelly Prescott, so when I got home, it was almost eleven . . . late for me, what with my having to be at work by eight.**

**Still, I was glad I'd gone out, as it had taken my mind off what I suspected awaited me in a few hours: another visit from the ravishing Mrs. Diego.**

"More like insane," Jake muttered.

**But as I was washing my hair before bed, it occurred to me that there was no reason why I had to make things easy on Miss Maria. I mean, why should I be victimized in my own bed?**

"You shouldn't at all from the beginning," Andy said sadly.

"But I'm relieved to know she's going to defend herself and not have her throat slit open in the night," Helen sighed.

**No reason. No reason at all. I did not have to put up with that kind of nonsense. Because that's what it was. Nonsense.**

"_Scary_ nonsense," David mumbled.

**Well, sort of scary nonsense, but still nonsense, all the same.**

David smiled at having said something similar to his favourite sibling.

**So when I turned out the light that night, it was with a definite sense of satisfaction. I was, I felt, well protected from anything Maria might pull. I had with me beneath the covers a veritable arsenal of weapons, including an axe, a hammer, and something I could not identify that I had taken from Andy's workshop, **

"I was wondering where those had vanished to!" Andy yelped. "They disappeared for a week before turning up all of a sudden."

"But why were they in my room?" David whispered.

**But which had evil-looking spikes on it. **

Andy chuckled a little.

**Furthermore, I had Max the dog with me. He would, I knew, awaken me as soon as anything otherworldly showed up, being extremely sensitive to such things.**

"Poor Max," Jake said.

**And, oh, yes, I slept in Doc's room.**

"She did what?!"

"So that's why Dad's tools in my room!"

**I know. I know. Cowardly in the extreme. But why should I have stayed in my own bed and waited for her, like a lame duck, when I could sleep in Doc's bed and maybe throw her off the scent? I mean, it wasn't like I was looking for a fight or anything. Well, except for the whole not-doing-a-thing-she-said thing. I guess that was sort of indicative of looking for a fight. But not, you know, actively.**

"Good," Helen said satisfied.

**Because, I have to tell you, while ordinarily I might have gone out looking for Maria de Silva's grave, so I could just, you know, have it out with her then and there, this was a little different. **

"Susannah!" Helen said exasperated.

**Because of Jesse. Don't ask me why, but I just didn't think I had it in me to go and rough up his ex, the way I would have if she didn't have this connection to him. I can't say I'm really used to waiting for ghosts to come to me...**

"We know," Andy sighed.

**But this. This was different.**

**Anyway, I had just snuggled down between Doc's sheets (freshly laundered - I wasn't taking any chances. I don't know what goes on in the beds of twelve-year-old boys, and frankly, I don't want to know)**

"What is that supposed to mean?" David asked.

"Well," Jake said both amused and unsure how to word it politely, "Suze probably thinks you...well...ah...she doesn't know-"

"She thinks you might touch yourself," Brad said blunted.

"Brad!"

"Why would she think I touch myself? Touch myself where?" David asked wide eyed.

"Touch your di-"

"BRAD SHUT UP!" Andy roared as he covered David's ears. "If David has any questions he can ask me later. I don't want you teaching him any of those myths."

Brad flushed as he remembered the story Jake told him how if you touched yourself too much your willy would fall off. He used to think that till he was fifteen and his father did the obligatory sex talk. He turned a brighter and angrier red when he saw David's smirk. The little brat knew what Suze meant and just played them!

**and was blinking in the darkness at the odd things Doc has hanging from his ceiling, a model of the solar system and all of that, when Max started to growl.**

"Oh no!" Helen worried.

**He did it so low that at first I didn't hear it. But since I had pulled him into bed with me (not that there was a lot of room, what with the ax and the hammer and the spiky thing) I could feel the growl reverberating through his big canine chest.**

**Then it got louder, and the hair on Max's back started standing up. That's when I knew we were in for either an earthquake or a nocturnal visitation from the former belle of Salinas County.**

"Please be an earthquake," Helen murmured.

**I sat up, grabbing the spiky thing and holding it like a baseball bat, looking around wildly while saying to Max in a low voice, "Good boy. It's okay, boy. Everything's going to be all right, boy," and telling myself that I believed it.**

**That's when someone materialized in front of me. And I swung the spiky thing as I hard as I could.**

"I hope she managed to kill that bitch again," Helen muttered spitefully before she handed the book back to Jake.


	6. Chapter 6

**"Susannah!" Jesse cried from where he'd leaped to avoid being struck. "What are you doing ?"**

"Oh thank God!" Helen slumped back into the sofa. "She's safe. She's safe."

**I nearly dropped the spiky thing; I was so relieved it was him.**

"Don't blame her at all," Andy murmured.

**Max went wild with whining and growling. The poor thing was clearly having some sort of doggie nervous breakdown. In order not to risk his waking everyone in the house, and then having to explain why I was sleeping in my stepbrother's bed with a bunch of Andy's tools, I let him out of the room. As I did so, Jesse took the spiky thing from me and looked down at it curiously.**

"Poor Max," David said.

**"Susannah," he said when I'd closed the door again, "why are you sleeping in David's room, armed with a pick?"**

The boys couldn't help but snicker at that.

**I raised my eyebrows, looking way more surprised than the occasion warranted. "Is that what that is? I was wondering."**

Jake choked on the last word as the snickers turned into laughter. It took a while to calm down.

**Jesse just shook his head at me. "Susannah," he said, "tell me what is going on. Now."**

**"Nothing," I said, my voice sounding too squeaky and high-pitched even to my own ears. I hurried forward and got back into Doc's bed, stubbing my toe on the hammer but not saying anything, since I didn't want Jesse to know it was there. **

The laughter started up again.

**Finding me in my stepbrother's bed with a pick was one thing.**

Jake could barely get the sentence out he was laughing so much.

**Finding me in my stepbrother's bed with a pick, an axe, and a hammer was something else entirely.**

They had to stop there until everyone eventually calmed down and stop laughing.

**"Susannah." Jesse sounded really mad, and he doesn't get mad all that often. Except, of course, when he finds me sucking face with strange boys in the driveway, that is. "Is that an axe ?"**

"He knows she's lying to him and that makes him angry," Helen deduced, "after all they usually have a more honest and open relationship especially since that incident with Michael Meducci."

**Damn! I shoved it back down beneath the covers. "I can explain," I said.**

"I like to hear that explanation," Andy grinned.

**He leaned the pick against the side of the bed and folded his arms across his chest. "I'd like to hear it," he said.**

**"Well." I took a deep breath. "It's like this."**

"Well?" Andy encouraged.

**And then I couldn't think of any way to explain it, other than the truth.**

"And she doesn't want to tell him that," Helen murmured, "Because she thinks he will leave."

**And I couldn't tell him that.**

**Jesse must have read in my face the fact that I was trying to think up a lie, since he suddenly unfolded his arms and leaned forward, placing one hand on either side of the headboard behind me, and sort of capturing me between his arms, though he wasn't actually touching me. This was very unnerving and caused me to slump down very low against Doc's pillows.**

Helen leaned forward eagerly while David looked horrified. If Suze and Jesse did anything in his bed, he's getting a new mattress and that's final!

**But even that didn't really do any good, since Jesse's face was still only about six inches from mine.**

Helen was giddy with excitement, David was about to be sick out of disgust. There was a limit.

**"Susannah," he said. He was really mad now. Fed up, even, you might say. "What is happening here? Last night I could swear I felt ... a presence in your room. And then tonight you are sleeping in here, with picks and axes? What is it that you aren't telling me? And why? Why can't you tell me?"**

**I had sunk down as low as I could, but there was no escaping Jesse's angry face, unless I threw the sheet up over my head. And that, of course, wouldn't be at all dignified.**

"Dignity flew out the window the moment you decided to sleep in Dave's bed armed with things you didn't know the name of," Jake grinned. Helen glowered at him for interrupting his reading of what could be the first kiss – once Jesse calms down a little of course.

**"Look," I said as reasonably as I could, considering that there was a hammer digging into my foot. "It's not that I don't want to tell you. It's just that I'm afraid that if I do ..."**

**And then, don't ask me how, the whole thing just came tumbling out. Really. It was incredible. It was like he'd pushed a button on my forehead that said Information Please, and out it all came.**

Brad snickered at that while Jake shot him a filthy look.

**I told him everything, about the letters, the trip to the historical society, everything, finishing up with, "And the thing is, I didn't want you to know, because if your body really is buried out there, and they find it, well, that means that there's no reason for you to hang around here anymore, and I know it's selfish, but I would really miss you, so I was hoping if I didn't mention it you wouldn't find out and everything could just go on like normal."**

"Eh?"

"Yes because normal means insane knife wielding psychos at four in the morning," David muttered. Honestly sometimes his sister was far too unreasonable.

**But Jesse didn't have at all the sort of reaction to this information that I thought he would. He didn't sweep me into his arms and kiss me passionately like in the movies, or even call me querida , whatever it means, and stroke my hair, which was wet from my shower.**

"Urgh!"

Helen leaned in even more eager.

**Instead, he just started laughing.**

Helen slumped back in disappointment while the boys sighed their relieve.

**Which I didn't really appreciate. I mean, after everything I had gone through for him in the past twenty-four hours, you would think he would show a bit more gratitude than to sit there and laugh.**

"It is rather uncalled for," Andy agreed. "But I imagine she didn't tell Jesse _everything_."

**Especially when my life might very well be in mortal peril.**

**I mentioned this to him, but that only made him laugh harder.**

Brad and Jake snickered at that.

**Finally, when he was through laughing ****-**** which didn't happen until I'd pulled the hammer out from under the covers, something that sent him into fresh peals, but what was I supposed to do? It was still digging into me ****-**** he did reach out and sort of ruffle my hair, but there wasn't anything the least bit romantic about it, since I had put Kiehl's leave-in conditioner on it and I'm pretty sure it got on his fingers.**

"He's a ghost," David said flatly.

Helen just curled up and grumbled darkly in disappointment. She was with Suze on this one, Jesse should have held her and kissed her not laugh at her!

**That just made me madder at him than ever, even though technically it wasn't his fault. So I took the axe out from beneath the sheets, too, and then pulled the covers up over my head and rolled over and wouldn't talk to him anymore. Or look at him. Very mature, I know, but I was peeved.**

Helen's lips twitched at that. Suze used to hide under the covers whenever she was sulking as a child. It was both adorable, endearing, and amusing.

**"Susannah," he said in a voice that was a little hoarse from all the laughing he'd been doing. I felt like punching him. I really did. "Don't be like that. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I laughed. It's just that I didn't understand a word you just said, you were talking so fast. And then when you pulled out that hammer ****-****"**

Jake and Brad laughed again and David giggled a little at that. The hammer was rather silly.

**"Go away," I said.**

"Mature," Brad snorted.

**"Come on, Susannah," Jesse said in his silkiest, most persuasive voice ****- ****which he was using on purpose to make me go all squishy. Except that it wasn't going to work this time. **

"Are you sure it's not going to work?" Andy raised an eyebrow as his wife virtually melted beside him at that description.

**"Let go of the sheet."**

**"No," I said, clutching the sheet tighter as he plucked at it. "I said go away."**

**"No, I won't go away. Sit up. I want to talk to you seriously now, but how can I do that when you won't look at me? Turn around."**

**"No," I said. I was really mad. I mean, you would have been, too. That Maria was one scary individual.**

"You're telling me," David shivered.

**And he'd been going to marry her! Well, a hundred and fifty years ago, anyway. Had he even known her? Known that she wasn't anything like the girl who'd written those idiotic letters to him? What had he been thinking, anyway?**

"I assume something along the lines of 'I must do my duty' like many did back then," David said. Though he agreed with Suze, why did Jesse want to be with something that idiotic and scary?

**"Why don't you just go hang out with Maria," I suggested to him acidly. "Maybe you two could sit around and sharpen her knives together and have some more laughs at my expense. Ha ha, you could say. That mediator is so funny."**

"Someone's jealous," Brad muttered.

"Well...at least she's being honest to him now," Helen said.

**"Maria?" Jesse pulled on the sheet some more. "What are you talking about, knives?"**

**Okay. So I hadn't been totally up front with him. I hadn't told him the whole story. Yeah, the part about the letters and the historical society and the hole and all. But the part about Maria showing up with the knife ****- ****the reason, in fact, that I was sleeping in Doc's bed with a bunch of tools? Hadn't mentioned that part.**

"We noticed," Andy said dryly.

**Because I'd known how he was going to react. Exactly the way he did.**

"Worried? Concerned? Angry?" Helen suggested.

**"Maria and knives?" he echoed. "No. No."**

"Oh," Helen drooped in disappointment once more, "denial. Jesse is really dropping the ball in this entry."

"He's a bloke," Andy said as if it explained everything.

Well...it sort of did for Helen.

**That did it. I rolled over and said to him, very sarcastically, "Oh, okay, Jesse. So that knife she held to my throat last night that must have been an imaginary knife. And I must have imagined it when she threatened to kill me, too."**

Everyone flinched at that.

**I started to roll back over in a huff, but this time he caught me before I got turned all the way and swung me back around to face him. He wasn't, I saw with some satisfaction, laughing now. Or even smiling.**

"Because it isn't funny!" David cried out.

**"A knife?" He was looking down at me like he wasn't sure he'd heard me right. "Maria was here? With a knife? Why?"**

**"You tell me," I said, even though I knew the answer perfectly well. "Someone's been dead and gone for as long as she has, it would have to take something pretty big to bring her back."**

**Jesse just stared down at me with those dark, liquid eyes of his. If he knew anything, he wasn't saying.**

"Men!" Helen rolled her eyes.

"Ghosts," Andy corrected Helen.

**Not just yet.**

**"She ****-**** she tried to hurt you?"**

"Yes," Helen whimpered at the memory. Andy and the boys just glared at the diary.

**I nodded, and had the satisfaction of feeling his grip on my shoulders tighten.**

Helen smiled weakly. Now Jesse was acting like he was supposed to.

**"Yes," I said. "And she held it right here" -I pointed to my jugular - "and she said if I didn't tell Andy to stop digging, she was going to k -"**

Everyone shuddered at that and Andy pulled Helen into an vice like hold.

**Kill me, was what I was going to say, but I didn't get a chance to, because Jesse snatched me up - really, snatched, that's the only way to describe it - and held onto me very tightly for someone who had thought the whole thing a big funny joke just a few seconds before.**

"Aww!" Helen cooed. Andy hid his grin in her hair while his sons rolled their eyes.

**This was, I must say, extremely gratifying. It got even more gratifying when Jesse said some stuff - though I didn't know what it was, because it was in Spanish -into my wet hair.**

"So romantic," Helen whispered. Andy decided he needed to brush up on his Spanish after hearing that.

**But that death grip (excuse the pun) he had me in didn't need any translating: he was scared. Scared for me .**

**"It was a really large knife," I said, enjoying the feel of his big strong shoulder beneath my cheek. I could totally get used to this. "And very pointy."**

"Really?" Brad raised an eyebrow.

**"Querida," he said. Okay, that word I understood. Well, sort of. He kissed the top of my head.**

Helen let out a squeal that caused the Ackermans to flinch.

**This was good. This was very good. I decided to go in for the kill.**

"The kill?" Brad's other eyebrow joined the previous one.

**"And then," I said, doing a very good imitation of sounding like I was crying, or at least, was pretty close to doing so, "she put her hand over my face to keep me from screaming, and one of her rings cut me and made my mouth all bloody."**

The boys couldn't resist. Suze, a damsel in distress? Suze crying over something like a damsel? Poor manipulated Jesse but...well...they couldn't resist bursting into hysterical laughter.

They stopped laughing when Helen glared at them and eventually Jake managed to focus on reading again.

**Oops. This one did not have the desired effect. I should probably not have brought up my bloody mouth, since instead of kissing me there, which was what I'd been aiming for, he pulled me away from him so he could look down into my face.**

"Good," David muttered.

Helen, however, was sulking at the lack of kisses.

**"Susannah, why didn't you tell me any of this last night?" He looked genuinely baffled. "I asked you if something was wrong, and you never said a word."**

**Hello? Hadn't he heard anything I just said?**

"Didn't she hear him when he said she was talking too fast?" Jake mumbled.

**"Because." I was speaking through gritted teeth, but you would have, too, if the man of your dreams was holding you in his arms and all he wanted to do was talk. And about his ex-girlfriend's attempt to murder you, no less.**

"Girls," Brad muttered.

**"It obviously has something to do with why you're here," I said. "Why you're still here, I mean, in this house, and why you've been here so long. Jesse, don't you see? If they find your body that proves you were murdered, and that means Colonel Clemmings was right."**

"Oh dear," David winced, "this isn't going to end well."

**Jesse's bewilderment seemed to increase, rather than lessen, thanks to this explanation.**

**"Colonel who?" he said.**

**"Colonel Clemmings," I said. "Author of My Monterey . His theory of why you disappeared is not that you got cold feet about marrying Maria and went off to San Francisco to stake a claim, but that that Diego guy killed you so he could marry Maria himself. And if they find your body, Jesse, that will prove you were murdered. And the most likely suspects are, of course, Maria and that Diego dude."**

"All of which Jesse didn't tell Suze, so..." Andy grimaced, "I don't think you're going to get the kiss you wanted, dear."

"Damn Suze and her big mouth," Helen said. But it wasn't full of conviction since Helen believed that this talk will help Suze and Jesse a great deal more than a handful of kisses.

**But instead of being dazzled by my excellent sleuthing skills, Jesse asked, in a shocked voice, "How do you know about him? About Diego?"**

**"I told you." God, this was irritating. When were we going to get to the kissing? "It's from a book Doc got out of the library. My Monterey , by Colonel Harold Clemmings."**

**"But Doc - I mean, David -is at camp, I thought."**

"What?! Even Jesse is calling me Doc now?" David wailed.

"This means he'll call me Dopey!" Brad bemoaned. "This is so unfair!"

**I said, frustratedly, "This was a long time ago. When I first got here. Last January."**

**Jesse didn't let go of me or anything, but he had an extremely odd look on his face.**

"I imagine the poor guy is hurt, angry, and confused that Suze went behind his back," Andy grimaced, "he probably hope to tell her himself one day."

**"Are you saying that you've known about this ... how I died ... all along?"**

"Yes."

**"Yes," I said, a little defensively. I was getting the feeling that maybe he thought I'd done something wrong, prying into his death. "But, Jesse, that's my job. That's what mediators do . I can't help it."**

"That's not going to help," Helen shook her head, "my daughter is an idiot sometimes."

**"Why did you keep asking me about how I died, then," he demanded, "if you already knew?"**

**I said, still on the defensive side, "Well, I didn't know. Not for sure. I still don't. But Jesse -" I wanted to make sure he understood this part, so I pulled back (and he unfortunately let go of me, but what could I do?) and sat up on my heels and said, very slowly and carefully, "If they find your body out there, not only is Maria going to be really mad, but you . . . you're going to move on. You know? From here. Because that's what's been holding you back, Jesse. The mystery of what happened to you. Once your body is found, though, that mystery will be solved. And you'll go. And that's why I couldn't tell you, you see? Because I don't want you to go. Because I l-"**

Helen leaned forward rapidly, accidentally elbowing her husband. "Did she just tell him she loved him?!" she demanded furiously.

"No," Jake said mildly terrified, "she cuts herself off."

"Urgh!" Helen fell back, squashing her now poor abused husband.

**Oh my God, I almost said it. I can't even tell you how close I came to saying it. I got out the L and then the O just seemed to follow.**

"WHY DIDN'T YOU?!"

**But at the last minute I was able to save it. I turned it to " - like having you around and I would really hate not seeing you anymore."**

Helen moaned into her hands while everyone stared at her a little horrified. "Just read," Andy said to his son.

**Swift, huh? That was a close one.**

**Because one thing I know for sure about guys, along with their inability to use a glass and lower the toilet seat and refill ice trays once they are empty: they really cannot handle the L word. I mean, it says so in just about every article I've ever read. And you have to figure this is true of all guys, even guys who were born a hundred and fifty years ago.**

"I'm offended," Jake muttered.

"We all are," David agreed.

"I'm not," Brad said cheerfully, "if Debbie told me she loved me, I'd run to the hills."

"Yeah well you're a jerk," David pointed out.

"DAD!"

"No, I agree with David, you shouldn't break a young lady's heart like that."

**And I guess my not using the L word paid off, since Jesse reached out and touched my cheek with his fingertips - just like he had done that day in the hospital.**

Helen cheered up a little at that.

**"Susannah," he said. "Finding my body is not going to change anything."**

"Apart from that I will miraculously come back to life," David added.

**"Um," I said. "Excuse me, Jesse, but I think I know what I'm talking about. I've been a mediator for sixteen years."**

"And? This is Jesse's journey."

**"Susannah," he said. "I have been dead for a hundred and fifty years. I think I know what I am talking about. And I can assure you, this mystery about my death you speak of ... that is not why I, as you put it, am hanging around here."**

"See!"

**A funny thing happened then. Just like in Clive Clemmings's office, earlier that day, I just started crying.**

"Relieve has that effect sometimes," Andy smiled.

**Really. Just like that.**

**Oh, I wasn't sobbing like a baby or anything, but my eyes filled up with tears and I got that bad prickly feeling behind my nose, and my throat started to hurt. It was weird, because I'd just, you know, been trying to act as if I were crying, and then all of a sudden, I really was.**

**"Jesse," I said in this horrible sniffly kind of voice (acting like you're going to cry is way preferable to actually crying, as there is much less mucus involved), "I'm sorry, but that's just not possible. I mean, I know . I've done this a hundred times. When they find your body out there, that is it. You're gone."**

**"Susannah," he said again. And this time he didn't just touch my cheek. He reached up and cupped the side of my face with one hand ...**

Helen cheered up a little though it was muted since her baby was crying genuinely and there was nothing she could do.

**Although the romantic effect was somewhat ruined by the fact that he was half laughing at me. To give him credit, though, he looked as if he were trying just as hard not to laugh as I was trying not to cry.**

"Men!" Helen cried out exasperated. "I give up!"

**"I promise you, Susannah," he said, with a lot of pauses between the words to give them emphasis, "that I am not going anywhere, whether or not your stepfather finds my body in the backyard. All right?"**

"He comes back alive though; doesn't that mean he leaves for a while?" Andy asked confused.

Everyone shrugged. They had no idea how this worked at all.

**I didn't believe him, of course. I wanted to and all, but the truth is, he didn't know what he was talking about.**

"Arrogant, much?" Brad muttered.

**What could I do, though? I had no choice but to be brave about it. I mean, I couldn't very well just sit there and cry my eyes out over it. What kind of fool would I seem then?**

"Just a girl with a broken heart, sweetie," Helen murmured softly.

**So I said, unfortunately in a very mucusy manner, since by that time the tears were sort of spilling out, "Really? You promise?"**

**Jesse grinned and let go of my face. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, lace-trimmed thing I recognized. Maria de Silva's handkerchief. He'd used it before to bind up various cuts and scrapes I'd sustained in the line of mediation duty. Now he used it to wipe my tears.**

"That takes the romance out of it now Maria has threatened Suze," Helen grumbled.

**"I swear," he said, laughing. But just a little.**

**In the end, he persuaded me to come back to my own bed. He said he'd make sure his ex-girlfriend didn't come after me in the night. Only he didn't call her his ex-girlfriend. He just called her Maria. I still wanted to ask him what he'd been thinking, going out with a ferret-faced ice bitch like her, but there never really seemed to be a right moment.**

The boys snickered a little at the insult.

**Is there ever a right moment to ask someone why they were going to marry the person who had had them killed?**

"God no!"

**Probably not.**

**I don't know how Jesse thought he was going to stop Maria if she came back. True, he had been dead a lot longer than she had, so he had had a little more practice at the whole ghost thing. It seemed pretty likely, in fact, that Maria's haunting of me was her first and only visit back to this world from whatever spiritual plane she'd inhabited since her death. The longer someone has been a ghost, the more powerful they tend to be.**

**Unless, of course, like Maria, they happened to be filled with rage.**

**But Jesse and I had, together, fought ghosts every bit as angry as Maria, and won. We would win this time, too, I knew, so long as we stuck together.**

**It was definitely strange going to bed knowing someone was going to be sitting there, watching me sleep. But after I got used to the idea, it was sort of nice, knowing he was there with Spike on the daybed, reading a book he'd found in Doc's room called A Thousand Years by the light of his own spectral glow.**

"Oh that's a good book," David piped up, "I must ask Jesse's opinion on it next time I see him."

**It would have been more romantic if he'd just sat there gazing longingly at my face, but beggars can't be choosers, and how many other girls do you know who have boys perfectly willing to sit in their bedrooms and watch for evil trespassers all night? I bet you can't even name one.**

"Nope," Helen said cheerfully, "this boy is a keeper."

**I suppose eventually I must have fallen asleep, since when I opened my eyes again it was morning, and Jesse was still there. He had finished A Thousand Years and had moved on to a book from one of my shelves called Bridges of Madison County , which he seemed to find excruciatingly amusing, although he was trying not to laugh loud enough to wake me.**

David scrunched his face up in disgust. He didn't like Bridges of Madison County either.

**God, how embarrassing.**

"Really?"

**I didn't realize then that it was the last time I'd ever see him.**

"Oh no!" Helen sighed. "This book is becoming more and more depressing. Every time I think something will cheer Susie up a comment like this destroys all hope."

"Well I wouldn't worry," David said soothingly, "after all, she is with Jesse now, so something must have gone right."

"And on that note," Jake said, "that is the end of the entry. Brad it's your turn."


	7. Chapter 7

**My day pretty much went downhill from there.**

"That's just what every mother wants to hear," Helen muttered.

**I guess while Maria wasn't that interested in renewing her acquaintance with her ex, she was still plenty interested in torturing me. I got my first inkling of this when I opened the refrigerator and pulled out the brand new carton of orange juice someone had bought to replace the one finished off by Dopey and Sleepy the day before.**

"Last time _ever_, shall I buy a carton from that shop," Andy growled.

**I had just opened it when Dopey stomped in, snatched the carton from me, and lifted it to his lips.**

"Brad!" Andy and Helen shouted.

"Trust me," Brad grimaced, "I got my just desserts. Never again have I snatched a carton of Suze again after that."

"What did she do to him?" Helen sighed to Andy.

"Nothing," Andy reassured his wife, "err...we had all agreed not to tell you this...but...well..."

"What did you not tell me?" Helen's eyes flashed dangerously.

"You'll find out!" Andy said hurriedly. "Brad, read!"

**I started to go, "Hey!" in an irritated voice, but the word soon turned into a shriek of disgust and terror when what poured into my stepbrother's mouth was not juice, but bugs.**

Brad dropped the book and gagged. Suddenly it was as if it was happening now. He could feel the tiny legs crawling inside his mouth, along his teeth, and down his tongue – he was going to throw up!

"Here," Jake said gently handing Brad the plastic bag that contained the food. "Deep breathes.

"I'll read," David said helpfully.

Helen had just turned pale – bugs, bugs in her boy's mouth, she felt sick to the stomach just at the thought.

**Hundreds of bugs. Thousands of bugs. Live bugs, wriggling and crawling and falling from his open mouth.**

"Oh God," Helen moaned.

Brad was heaving. The vomit had yet to come but he was certain he was going to puke.

**Dopey realized what was happening about a split second after I did. He threw the carton down and ran to the sink, spitting out as many of the black beetles that had fallen into his mouth as he could.**

Helen started to gag as well.

**Meanwhile, they were still swarming over the sides of the carton onto the floor.**

**I don't know how I summoned the inner strength to do what I did next. If there's one thing I hate, it's bugs. Next to poison oak, it is one of the main reasons I spend so little time in the great outdoors. I mean, I do not mind the odd ant drowning in a pool or a butterfly landing on my shoulder, but show me a mosquito or, God forbid, a cockroach, and I am out the door.**

"Don't blame her at all," Helen and Brad shuddered.

**Still, despite my near crippling fear of anything smaller than a peanut, I picked up that carton and poured its contents down the sink, then, quicker than you can say Raid, flicked on the disposal.**

**"Ohmygawd!" Dopey was yelling, as he continued to spit into the sink. "Ohmyfreakingawd."**

Although Brad managed to get through the experience without vomiting he couldn't stop shaking. Why did he have to relive that experience? Jake muttered something comfortingly as he rubbed Brad's back.

**Only he didn't say freaking. Under the circumstances, I didn't blame him.**

"Which is why I didn't mention anything," Andy said as he eyed his middle child in concern.

**Our shrieking had brought Sleepy and my stepfather into the kitchen. They just stood there staring at the hundreds of black beetles that had escaped death by the kitchen drain and were scurrying around the terra-cotta tiles. At least until I yelled, "Step on them!"**

Helen shivered and Brad clutched the bag tighter.

**Then we all started stomping on as many of the disgusting things as we could.**

**When we were through, only a couple ended up getting away, the ones that had the sense to make for the crack beneath the fridge, and one or two that made it all the way to the open sliding glass doors to the deck. It had been arduous, disgusting work, and we all stood around panting . . . except for Dopey, who, with a groan, rushed off into the bathroom, presumably to rinse with Listerine, or maybe to check for any antennas that might have gotten caught between his teeth.**

"I have never brushed my teeth as much as I did that day," Brad mumbled, "I brushed and brushed till my gums bled."

"Ew," David mumbled.

"It was better than bugs' guts!" Brad protested. He really wanted to brush his teeth now...

**"Well," Andy said, when I explained what had happened. "That's the last time I buy organic."**

**Which was kind of funny, in a sick way. Except that I happened to know that organic or frozen from concentrate, it wouldn't have made any difference: a poltergeist had been at work.**

"Why me?" Brad wailed.

"In all fairness Suze was supposed to drink it first," Jake pointed out, "this time it was your own greedy self's fault."

"Another reason to hate that bitch," Helen snarled. She softened at the pitiful sight that was Brad and knelt down on the floor before pulling him over in a hug. "Rest for a while, David can keep reading," she murmured softly. Without a single thought about how he might look like a baby, Brad gladly placed his head on Helen's lap and allowed her to stroke his hair soothingly. Soon enough he almost forgot about the bugs.

God he loved his Mom.

**Andy looked at the mess on the floor and said in a sort of dazed voice, "We have to get this cleaned up before your mother gets home."**

"Very much appreciated," Helen reassured Andy. She had forgiven him for keeping it a secret, there are just some things you're better off not knowing.

**He had that right. You think I've got a thing about bugs? You should see my mother. We are neither of us what you would call nature lovers.**

Jake tried to hide his amusement as he remembered the scream Helen and Suze let out that time with the giant sand fly.

**We threw ourselves into our work, scrubbing and scouring bug guts off the tile, while I made subtle suggestions that we order in for all our meals, not just supper, for the time being. I wasn't sure if Maria had gotten her hands on any other foodstuffs, but I suspected nothing in the pantry or refrigerator was going to be safe.**

Andy was thankful at the suggestion but he did grimace as he remembered the huge expenses it took to replace every food item, along with building a hot tub, and then the fumigation process. Thank God he didn't have to pay anyone to do it or it would be even more expensive.

**Andy was only too willing to go along with this, blathering on about how insect infestations can destroy entire crops, and how many homes he'd worked on had been destroyed by termites, and how important it was to have your house regularly fumigated.**

**But fumigation, I wanted to say to him, doesn't do any good when the bugs are the result of a vengeful ghost.**

"I would have laughed if she told me that," Andy said sheepishly.

**But of course I didn't mention this. I highly doubt he would have understood what I was talking about.**

**Andy doesn't believe in ghosts.**

"Oh I do now," Andy muttered.

**Must be nice to have that luxury.**

"Oh honey," Andy murmured.

**When Sleepy and I finally got to work, it appeared briefly that things were looking up, since we did not even get in trouble for being late. This was, of course, on account of Sleepy having Caitlin so firmly in his thrall. So you see, there are some advantages to having stepbrothers.**

"Glad to be at your service," Jake grinned.

**There did not even seem to have been a complaint from the Slaters about my having taken Jack off hotel property without their permission, since I was told to go straight to their suite. This, I thought to myself as I made my way down the thickly carpeted hotel corridors to their rooms, really is too good to be true, and just goes to show that behind every cloud is a slice of clear blue sky.**

"It's nice to hear an optimistic thought from her," Andy said cheerfully.

**At least, that's what I was thinking as I knocked on their door. When it swung open, however, to reveal not just Jack, but both Slater brothers dressed in swimwear, I began to have my doubts.**

"And now I can see why she's so pessimistic," Andy grumbled.

**Jack pounced on me like a kitten on a ball of yarn.**

"Aw!" Helen cooed quietly. She didn't want to disturb Brad.

**"Guess what?" he cried. "Paul's not playing golf or tennis or anything today. He wants to spend the whole day with us . Isn't that great?"**

"Yeah, wonderful," Jake deadpanned, "a perverted blackmailer enjoying a whole day half naked with my sister. It's a dream come true."

**"Um," I said.**

**"Yeah, Suze," Paul said. He had on long baggy swim trunks (proving that it could have been worse: he could have been wearing one of those micro Speedos) and a towel wrapped around his neck and nothing else, except a smirk. "Isn't that great?"**

"Punch him."

**"Um," I said. "Yeah. Great."**

"Punch him."

**Dr. and Mrs. Slater scooted past us in their golf clothes. "You kids have fun now," Nancy called. "Suze, we've got lessons all day. You'll stay until five, won't you?" Then, without waiting for an answer, she said, "Okay, buh-bye," took her husband by the arm, and left.**

"How polite," Helen muttered sarcastically.

**Okay, I said to myself. I can handle this. Already that morning I'd handled a swarm of bugs. I mean, despite the fact that every once in a while I thought I felt one crawling on me and jumped, only to find it was just my own hair or whatever, I had recovered pretty well. Far better, probably, than Dopey ever would.**

Brad agreed with a shudder. He still had nightmares. He relaxed when Helen murmured soothingly to him though and fell back to a near doze. He was dangerously close to falling asleep.

**So I could certainly handle having Paul Slater around all day bugging me. Um, I mean bothering me.**

"Pun not intended and all that, huh?" Jake asked amused.

**Right? No problem.**

**Except that it was a problem. Because Jack kept wanting to talk about the whole mediator thing, and I kept muttering for him to shut up, and then he'd go, "Oh, it's okay, Suze, Paul knows."**

"Which is _not _okay," Jake muttered all amusement now lost.

**Which was the point. Paul wasn't supposed to know. It was supposed to be our secret, mine and Jack's. I didn't want stupid, non-believing,, since-you-won't-go-out-with-me-I'm-telling-on-you Paul to have any part of it. Especially since every time Jack mentioned anything about it, Paul lowered his Armanis and looked at me over the top of the frames, all expectantly, waiting to hear what I'd say.**

"Die, Paul, die?" Jake offered hopefully.

**What could I do? I pretended I didn't know what Jack was talking about. Which was frustrating to him, of course, but what else was I supposed to do? I didn't want Paul knowing my business. I mean, my own mother doesn't know. Why on earth would I tell Paul ?**

"She better not tell anyone else before me," Helen grumbled quietly.

**Fortunately, after the first six or seven times Jack tried to mention anything mediator related and I ignored him, he seemed to get the message and shut up. It helped that the pool had gotten very crowded with other little kids and their parents and sitters, so he had plenty to distract him.**

"That's good, the kid deserves to have fun," Andy said.

**But it was still a little unnerving, leaning there against the side of the pool with Kim, who'd shown up with her charges, to glance at Paul every so often and see him stretched out on a deck chair, his face turned in my direction. Especially since I had the feeling that Paul, unlike Sleepy, up in his chair, was wide awake behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses.**

"I was awake," Jake grumbled.

**Then again, as Kim put it, "Hey, if a hottie like that wants to look at me, he can look all he wants."**

"That's...just wrong..." Andy shook his head. "It sounds like she doesn't mind a peeping tom."

**But of course, it's different for Kim. She doesn't have the ghost of a hundred-and-fifty-year-old hottie living in her bedroom.**

"Or if she does, she isn't aware of it," Jake grinned.

**All in all, I would say the morning turned out pretty wretchedly, considering. I figured that, after lunch, the day could only get better.**

"One would hope," Andy muttered.

**Was I ever wrong. After lunch was when the cops showed up.**

"Cops?!" Helen yelped causing Brad to sit up in alarm. "What were the cops doing there?!"

**I was stretched out on a lounge chair of my own, keeping one eye on Jack, who was playing a pretty rambunctious game of Marco Polo with Kim's kids, and another on Paul, who was pretending to read a copy of The Nation , but who was, as Kim pointed out, spying on us over the top of the pages, when Caitlin appeared, looking visibly upset, followed by two burly members of the Carmel police.**

**I assumed that they were merely passing through, on the way to the men's locker room, where there'd been an occasional break-in. Imagine my great surprise when Caitlin led the cops right up to me and said in a shaking voice, "This is Susannah Simon, Officers."**

"Why do I get the feeling that Suze is going to lose her job?" Andy despaired.

**I hurried to climb into my hideous khaki shorts, while Kim, in the lounge chair beside mine, gaped up at the cops like they were mermen risen from the sea or something.**

The boys snickered at that.

**"Miss Simon," the taller of the cops said. "We'd just like a word with you for a moment, if you don't mind."**

**I've talked to more than my fair share of cops in my time. Not because I hang out with gang-bangers, as Sleepy likes to think, but because in mediating, one often is forced to, well, bend the law a little.**

"Bend is an understatement," Helen grumbled. She was just lucky that no one wanted to press charges.

**For instance, let's say Marisol had not turned that rosary over to Jorge's daughter. Well, in order to carry out Jorge's last wishes, I would have been forced to break into Marisol's home, take the rosary myself, and mail it to Teresa anonymously. Anyone can see how something like that, which is really for the greater good in the vast scheme of things, might be misinterpreted by local law enforcement as a crime.**

"That's because it is a crime!"

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions," David quoted the old proverb.

"That's not reassuring Dave," Jake said bumping David in the head lightly with his fist.

**So, yes, the fact of the matter is, I have been hauled before the cops any number of times, much to my poor mother's chagrin. However, with the exception of that unfortunate incident that had landed me in the hospital some months previously, I had not done anything lately, that I could think of, that could even remotely be construed as unlawful.**

Helen just sighed.

**So it was with some curiosity, but little trepidation, that I followed the officers ****-**** Knightly and Jones ****-**** out of the pool area and behind the Pool House Grill, near the Dumpsters, the closest area where, I suppose, the officers felt we could be assured total privacy for our little chat.**

"Lovely," Helen grimaced.

**"Miss Simon," Officer Knightly, the taller policeman, began, as I watched a lizard dart out of the shade of a nearby rhododendron, look at us in alarm, and then dart back into the shadows. "Are you acquainted with a Dr. Clive Clemmings?"**

"Oh no!" Helen gasped. "What happened?"

"Heart attack," David replied, "it was in the newspaper remember?"

**I was shocked into admitting that I was. The last thing I had expected Officer Knightly to mention was Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D. I was thinking something more along the lines of, oh, I don't know. Taking an eight-year-old off hotel property without his parents' permission.**

"The police wouldn't come for that," Andy rolled his eyes. He swears that all of his children were drama queens.

**Stupid, I know, but Paul had really rattled me with that one.**

"Paul's a jerk," Jake muttered.

**"Why?" I asked. "Is he ****-**** Mr. Clemmings ****- ****all right?"**

**"Unfortunately, no," Officer Jones said. "He's dead."**

**"Dead?" I wanted to reach out for something to hold onto. Unfortunately there wasn't anything to grab except the Dumpster, and since it was filled with the remains of that afternoon's lunch, I didn't want to touch it.**

Helen scrunched her nose up in disgust. She didn't want her child to touch the Dumpster either.

**I settled for sinking down onto the curb.**

**Clive Clemmings? My mind was racing. Clive Clemmings dead ? How? Why ? I hadn't liked Clive Clemmings, of course. I'd been hoping that when Jesse's body turned up, I could go back to his office and rub it in his face. You know, the whole part about Jesse having been murdered after all.**

Brad rolled his eyes, definitely feeling better now, he was ready to rib Suze.

**Only now it looked as if I wouldn't get the chance.**

**"What happened?" I asked, gazing up at the cops bewilderedly.**

**"We're not sure, precisely," Officer Knightly said. "He was found this morning at his desk at the historical society, dead from an apparent heart attack. According to the receptionist's sign-in log, you were one of the few people who saw him yesterday."**

Andy frowned alongside with Helen while they understood that it was protocol they didn't like that this was happening without their presence at all. One of them should have been called for this or failing that Jake should have been there by Suze's side.

**Only then did I remember that the lady behind the reception desk had made me sign in. Damn!**

"Language," Andy muttered.

**"Well," I said, heartily ****- ****but not too heartily, I hoped. "He was fine when I talked to him."**

**"Yes," Officer Knightly said. "We're aware of that. It's not Dr. Clemmings's death we're here about."**

"Oh what now?" Helen moaned.

**"It isn't?" Wait a minute. What was going on?**

**"Miss Simon," Officer Jones said. "When Dr. Clemmings was found this morning, it was also discovered than an item of particular value to the historical society was missing. Something you apparently looked at, with Dr. Clemmings, just yesterday."**

"The letters?" Jake frowned.

**The letters. Maria's letters. They were gone. They had to be. She had come and taken them, and Clive Clemmings had caught a glimpse of her somehow and had had a heart attack from the shock of seeing the woman in the portrait behind his desk walking around his office.**

"I thought only mediators saw ghosts?" Brad said.

"I think sometimes other people see them or hear them," David said, "after all I heard Jesse."

**"A small painting." Officer Knightly had to refer to his notepad. "A miniature of someone named Hector de Silva. The receptionist, Mrs. Lambert, says Dr. Clemmings told her you were particularly interested in it."**

"Oh no!"

**This information, so unexpected, shook me. Jesse's portrait ? Jesse's portrait was gone from the collection? But who would have taken that ? And why ?**

"To frame Suze," Brad said.

"But how? No one knows Suze knows Jesse," David pointed out.

**I did not have to feign my innocence for once as I stammered, "I ****-****I looked at the painting, yes. But I didn't take it or anything. I mean, when I left, Mr. - Dr. Clemmings was putting it away."**

"That's not going to help," Andy sighed.

**Officers Knightly and Jones exchanged glances. Before they could say anything more, however, someone came around the corner of the Pool House.**

"Please let it be you," Helen pleaded her eldest stepson.

"Err..."

**It was Paul Slater.**

"Damn!"

**"Is there a problem with my brother's baby-sitter. Officers?" he demanded in a bored voice that suggested- to me, anyway ****- ****that the Slater family's employees were often being dragged off for questioning by members of law enforcement.**

"For some reason I wouldn't be surprised," Andy muttered. He really disliked Mr and Mrs Slater who seemed to be the type to not notice the nanny abusing their child until the housekeeper calls the cops.

**"Excuse me," Officer Knightly said, sounding really very offended. "But as soon as we are done questioning this witness, we ****-**** "**

"Illegal questioning," Helen growled.

**Paul whipped off his sunglasses and barked, "Are you aware that Miss Simon is a minor? Shouldn't you be questioning her in the presence of her parents?"**

"Okay, now the guy is being decent," Jake admitted reluctantly, "but why?"

"A date obviously," Brad pointed out.

"Right now I don't care about his motive," Helen said passionately, "just as long as he gets her out of that situation."

**Officer Jones blinked a few times. "Pardon me, uh, sir," he began, though it was clear he didn't really consider Paul a sir, seeing as how he was under eighteen and all. "The young lady isn't under arrest. We're just asking her a few ****-****"**

"I should still be present!" Helen yelled at the book.

**"If she isn't under arrest," Paul said swiftly, "then she doesn't have to speak to you at all, does she?"**

**Officers Knightly and Jones looked at one another again. Then Officer Knightly said, "Well, no. But there has been a death and a theft, and we have reason to believe she might have information - "**

**Paul looked at me. "Suze," he said, "have these gentlemen read you your rights?"**

**"Um," I said. "No."**

**"Do you want to talk to them?"**

**"Um," I said, glancing nervously from Officer Knightly to Officer Jones, and then back again. "Not really."**

**"Then you don't have to."**

**Paul leaned down and took hold of my arm.**

"Just because you helped her doesn't mean you can touch her," Jake growled now in his overprotective brother mode. Something he lacked less than a year ago when he decided to snooze- err work instead of being there for his sister.

**"Say good-bye to the nice police officers," he said, pulling me to my feet.**

**I looked up at the police officers. "Uh," I said to them. "I'm very sorry Dr. Clemmings is dead, but I swear I don't know what happened to him, or that painting, either. Bye."**

**Then I let Paul Slater pull me back out to the pool.**

"You shouldn't let him do anything to you," Jake muttered.

**I am not normally so docile, but I have to tell you, I was in shock. Maybe it was post-being-questioned-by-the-police-but-not-taken- down-to-the-station-house exhilaration, but once we were out of the sight of Officers Knightly and Jones, I whirled around and grabbed Paul's wrist.**

**"All right," I said. "What was all that about?"**

**Paul had put his sunglasses back on, so it was hard to read the expression in his eyes, but I think he was amused.**

"Smug bastard."

"Jake that was uncalled for!" Andy snapped.

"I don't like him."

"Neither do I but right now he has done a good deed and there is no need for name calling."

**"All what?" he asked.**

**"All that," I said, nodding toward the back of the Pool House. "That whole Lone-Ranger-to-the-rescue thing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it just yesterday that you were going to turn me over to the authorities yourself? Or rat me out to my boss, anyway?"**

**Paul shrugged. "Yes," he said. "A certain someone pointed out to me, however, that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar."**

"Blergh," Brad muttered.

**At the time, all I felt was a little miffed at being called a fly. It didn't even occur to me to wonder who that "certain someone" might have been. It wasn't long before I found out, however.**

"Eh? What does that mean?"

"I don't know, Brad," David said, "but would you like me to continue reading and find out?"

"Please."


	8. Chapter 8

**Okay, so I went out with him.**

"Went out with who?" Brad asked.

"She went out with Paul."

"That jerk?" Brad scowled. "Why would she date him?"

"Because he saved her from the police," David said slowly.

**So what?**

"So what_? So what?_ Suze the guy is a sleazy blackmailer, one good moment doesn't change that!" Jake hissed, he turned to Helen who had managed to move back onto the sofa, "Mom, your daughter is nuts."

"I know," Helen sighed.

**So what does that make me? I mean, the guy asked me if I wanted to go with him for a burger after I dumped his brother back off with his parents at five, and I said yes.**

"Don't say dumped his brother," Andy mumbled, "it makes you sound terrible."

**Why shouldn't I have said yes? What did I have to look forward to at home, huh? Certainly not any hope of dinner. Roach- la mode? Spider fricassee?**

Brad and Helen shuddered while the others grimaced. Okay fair point. They would date Paul if it meant they could avoid a buggy meal.

**Oh, yeah, and a ghost who had her fiancé murdered and was going to try to off me next, at her earliest opportunity.**

"We didn't need the reminder," Helen grumbled.

**I thought maybe I'd misjudged Paul. Maybe I hadn't been fair. I mean, yeah, he had been kind of stalkerish the day before, but he more than made up for it with the whole rescuing-me-from-the-police thing.**

"Not really," Andy frowned, "he would have had to follow you to know where you went with the police."

**And he didn't make a single move on me. Not one. When I said I wanted to go home, he said no problem, and took me home.**

"Okay he has a shred of decency," Helen smiled.

**It certainly wasn't his fault that when we drove up to my house, he couldn't pull into the driveway on account of all the police cars and ambulances parked there.**

"Oh no," Helen moaned. She remembered that night...

**I swear one thing I am getting with my summer job money is a cell phone. Because stuff keeps on happening, and I have no idea, because I'm off having burgers with someone at Friday's.**

"One incident! But she is right but not one of those smart phones – just a cheapo Nokia or something," Andy amended.

**I jumped out of the car and ran up to where I saw all the people standing. When I reached the caution tape, which was strung up all around the hole where the hot tub was supposed to go, someone grabbed me by the waist and spun me around before I had a chance to do what I intended, which was, although I'm not too clear on this, scramble down into the hole, to join the people I saw down at the bottom of it, bending over something that I was pretty sure was a body.**

"Thank God I stopped her!"

**But, like I said, someone stopped me.**

**"Whoa, tiger," that someone said, swinging me around. It turned out to be Andy, looking extremely dirty and sweaty and unlike his normal self. "Hang on. Nothing for you to see there."**

Andy looked sheepish. For that whole summer he hadn't been his normal self.

**"Andy." The sun hadn't quite set, but I was having trouble seeing anyway. It was like I was in a tunnel, and all I could see was this bright pinprick of light at the end of it. "Andy, where's my mom?"**

"Oh how sweet," Helen said rather pleased, flattered, and very much touched, "she was worried that something had happened to me."

**"Your mom's fine," Andy said. "Everyone's fine."**

**The pinprick started getting a little wider. I could see my mom's face now, peering at me worriedly from the deck, with Dopey behind her, wearing his usual sneer.**

"She was causing a scene!"

**"Then what ****-****" I saw the men in the bottom of the hole lift up a stretcher. On the stretcher was a black body bag like the kind you always see on TV. "Who is that?" I wanted to know.**

Everyone grimaced at that. They all knew who it was though they wished they didn't.

**"Well, we're not sure," my stepfather said. "But whoever he is, he's been there a very long time, so chances are, he isn't anyone we know."**

Andy face palmed. Although he didn't know it or knew Jesse then but it was still not the right thing to say.

**Dopey's face loomed large in my line of vision.**

"Poor Suze," Jake joked.

"Oi!"

**"It's a skeleton," he informed me with a good deal of relish. He appeared to have gotten over the fact that only that morning he'd had a mouth full of beetles, and was back to his normal insufferable self. "It was totally awesome, Suze, you should have been here. My shovel went right through his skull. It cracked like it was an egg or something."**

Brad grimaced as everyone glared at him. He didn't know it was the corpse of the love of his stepsister's life!

**Well, that was enough for me. My tunnel vision came right back, but not soon enough to miss something that tumbled from the stretcher as it went past me. My gaze locked on it and followed it as it fluttered to the ground, landing very near my feet. It was only a deeply stained and extremely threadbare piece of material, no bigger than my hand. A rag, it looked like, though you could see that at one time it had had lace around its edges. Little bits of lace still clung to it like burrs, especially around the corner where, very faintly, you could read three embroidered initials:**

**MDS.**

"Oh God!" Helen groaned she was beginning to feel nauseous again.

**Maria de Silva. It was the handkerchief Jesse had used last night to dry my tears. Only it was the real handkerchief, frayed and brown with age.**

David closed his eyes that would break anyone. In fact it broke him a little because he really liked Jesse and the thought of his body rotting in their backyard disturbed him a little even though he reassured Suze it was just a body.

**And it had fallen out of the jumble of decaying material holding Jesse's bones together.**

Helen choked slightly on the bile that risen in his throat.

**I turned around and threw up Friday's bacon cheeseburger and potato skins all over the side of the house.**

"Don't blame her at all," Helen moaned.

**Needless to say, no one except my mother was very sympathetic about this. Dopey declared it the most disgusting thing he had ever seen. Apparently he'd forgotten what he'd had in his mouth less then twelve hours before. **

"I was hoping she would forget that," Brad muttered no a bright red.

**Andy simply went and got the hose, and Sleepy, equally unimpressed, said he had to get going or he'd be late delivering 'za.**

"It wasn't like her to puke like that and I didn't want to be late for work!" Jake defended himself.

**My mother insisted on putting me to bed, even though having her in my room just then was about the last thing I wanted. I mean, I had just seen them removing Jesse's body from my backyard. I would have liked to have discussed this disturbing sight with him, but how could I do that with my mother there?**

"Something I don't particularly think Jesse wants to talk about anyway," Helen muttered.

"Poor bloke," Andy murmured.

**I figured if I just let her fuss over me for half an hour, she'd go. But she stayed much longer than that,**

"Is there something wrong with me wanting to look after my baby?!" Helen demanded.

No one dared point out that Suze was sixteen and no longer a baby.

**making me take a shower and change out of my uniform and into a silky pair of lounging pyjamas she'd bought me for Valentine's Day (pathetically, it was the only Valentine I received). **

Brad snickered until Helen glared at him. "You liked the Valentine Day pyjamas I brought you," she pointed out. Brad didn't argue that he also received multiple cards from secret admirers (even if one was Jake and Suze pulling a horrible joke on him) while Suze got just the one, mostly because his stepmother was right he liked the blue cotton top and bottoms with Darth Vader on them.

**Then she insisted on combing my hair out, like she used to when I was a little kid.**

Brad kept silent since he had been in the same position not that long ago.

**She wanted to talk, too, of course. She had plenty to say on the subject of the skeleton Andy and Dopey had found, insisting it was only "some poor man" who had gotten killed in a shoot-out back in the days when our home was a boarding-house for mercenaries and gunslingers and the odd rancher's son.**

**She said the police would insist on treating it as a homicide until the coroner had determined how long the body had been there, but since, she went on, the fellow still had his spurs on (spurs!) she assumed they would come to the same conclusion she had: that this guy had been dead for a lot longer than any of us had been alive.**

Helen grimaced at how unhelpful she had been back then but what else could she do at that moment of time – she didn't know the truth!

**She tried to make me feel better. But how could she? She didn't have any idea why I was so upset. I mean, I'm not Jack. I had never blabbed to her about my secret talent. My mom didn't know that I knew whose skeleton that was. She didn't know that just twelve hours ago he had been sitting on my daybed, laughing at Bridges of Madison County . And that a few hours before that, he had kissed me ****-**** albeit on the top of my head, but still.**

Helen wanted nothing more than to hug her daughter instead she had to settle for hugging her husband.

**I mean, come on. You'd be upset, too.**

Everyone had to agree with that.

**Finally, finally she left. I heaved a sigh of relief, thinking I could relax, you know?**

Helen couldn't help but huff at that.

**But no. Oh, no. Because my mother didn't retreat with the intention of leaving me alone. I found that out the hard way a couple of minutes later when the phone rang, and Andy hollered up the stairs that it was for me. I really did not feel like talking to anyone, but what could I do? Andy had already said I was home. So I picked up, and whose cheerful little voice do I hear on the other end?**

"Who's?" Jake asked.

**That's right.**

"I didn't know Suze knew a Mr That's Right," Jake joked weakly.

**Doc's.**

**"Suze, how are you doing?" my youngest stepbrother wanted to know. Although clearly he already knew. How I was doing, I mean. Obviously, my mother had called him at camp ****-**** who gets calls from their stepmother at camp, I ask you? ****– **

"Lots of people do!" Helen protested.

**And told him to call me. Because of course she knows. She knows he's the only one of my stepbrothers I can stand, **

David beamed while Jake grumbled. Brad didn't mind because he didn't like Suze that much either.

**And I'm sure she thought I might tell him whatever it was that was bothering me, and then she could pump him for information later.**

Helen smiled sheepishly.

**My mother isn't an award-winning television news journalist for nothing, you know.**

She then beamed proudly.

**"Suze?" Doc sounded concerned. "Your mom told me about . . . what happened. Do you want me to come home?"**

Jake and Brad looked at David who blushed. "At least I cared about her!" he snapped which caused Jake and Brad to look away guiltily.

**I flopped back down on my pillows. "Home? No, I don't want you to come home. Why would I want you to come home?"**

"For comfort or failing that for a distraction," David mumbled shyly.

**"Well," Doc said. He lowered his voice as if he suspected someone was listening in. **

"I thought Mom might be listening on the other phone," David said sheepishly.

**"Because of Jesse."**

**Out of all the people I live with, Doc was the only one who had the slightest idea that We Are Not Alone. Doc believed ... and he had good reason to. Once when I'd been in a real jam, Jesse had gone to him. Scared out of his wits, Doc had nevertheless come through for me.**

David smiled at that.

**And now he was offering to do so again.**

"I'm glad," Helen murmured, "that at the very least she has David."

**Only what could he do? Nothing. Worse than nothing, he could actually get hurt. I mean, look at what had happened to Dopey that morning. Did I want to see Doc with a faceful of bugs? No way.**

David felt warm and fuzzy at that. He was pleased that Suze didn't want him around because she as worried about him and not because she didn't want him around in general.

**"No," I said, quickly. "No, Doc ****-**** I mean, David. That isn't necessary. You stay where you are. Things are fine here. Really."**

**Doc sounded disappointed. "Suze, things are not fine. Do you want to talk about it, at least?"**

"I'm guessing no," Andy said sadly.

**Oh, yeah. I want to discuss my love life ****-**** or lack thereof ****- ****with my twelve-year-old stepbrother.**

David blushed; well when it is put like that...he didn't want to discuss it either.

**"Not really," I said.**

**"Look, Suze," Doc said. "I know it had to be upsetting. I mean, seeing his skeleton like that. But you've got to remember that our bodies are simply the vessel ****-**** and a very crude one, at that - in which our souls are carried while we're alive on earth. Jesse's body . . . well, it doesn't have anything to do with him anymore."**

Everyone stared at David in shock. "I think that is the most spiritual thing you have ever said in your life," Andy said.

**Easy for him to say, I thought miserably. He'd never gotten a look at Jesse's abs.**

David wrinkled his nose; he didn't even want to see Jesse's abs. Jake and Brad just burst out laughing at the idea of David swooning at Jesse.

**Not that, if he had, they would have interested Doc much, of course.**

"Definitely not!"

**"Really," Doc went on, "if you think about it, that's probably not the only body Jesse's going to have. According to the Hindus, we shed our outer shells - our bodies - several times. In fact, we keep doing so, depending on our karma, until we finally get it right, thus achieving liberation from the cycle of rebirth."**

"Why are none of my children Catholic?" Andy bemoaned jokingly, two atheists, a Hindu child genius, and a Buddhist mediator, quite a mixed bag there.

**"Oh?" I stared at the canopy over my bed. I really could not believe I was having this conversation. And with a twelve-year-old. "Do we?"**

David smiled. He loved Suze's willingness to listen to him.

**"Sure. Most of us, anyway. I mean, unless we get it right the first time. But that hardly ever happens. See, what's going on with Jesse is that his karma is all messed up, and he got bumped off the path to nirvana. He just needs to find his way back into the body he's supposed to get after, you know, his last one, and then he'll be fine."**

"Honey I know you mean well," Helen said gently, "but I don't think that's what Suze wanted to hear."

"Yeah...I didn't realise at the time," David said sheepishly.

**"David," I said. "Are you sure you're at computer camp? Because it sounds to me like maybe Mom and Andy dropped you off at yoga camp by mistake."**

Everyone chuckled at that.

**"Suze," Doc said with a sigh. "Look. All I'm saying is, that skeleton you saw, it wasn't Jesse, all right? It has nothing to do with him anymore. So don't let it upset you. Okay?"**

"Ah but it's easier said than done," Andy murmured.

**I decided it was high time to change the subject.**

Helen rolled her eyes.

**"So," I said. "Any cute girls at that camp?"**

Brad and Jake leered at the blushing David while Helen leaned in interestedly.

**"Suze," he said severely. "Don't -"**

"So there is?!" Helen squealed delightedly. "What's her name?"

**"I knew it," I said. "What's her name?"**

"Yeah, Dave," Brad smirked, "what's her name?"

"None of your business!" David snapped. "Now let me read!"

**"Shut up," Doc said.**

"David!"

"I didn't want to talk about her with Suze!"

"So there is a girl?" Andy grinned. "What's her name? Is she good at science like you? Does she eat anything or is she one of those fussy eaters?"

"Never mind that Dad!" Jake rolled his eyes, Andy's approval always rested on the girl's interest in food – if she only likes junk food or is virtually anorexic, then you should forget ever bringing her home – which is probably why Jesse is the only significant other that achieved true parental achievement. "How far did you get, Dave? Did you pull the moves like we taught you to?"

"What moves?" Helen narrowed her eyes at her eldest stepson.

"Err...READ DAVID!"

The bright red David who looked like he might just die of embarrassment was all too happy to read.

**"Look, I gotta go. But remember what I said, will you? I'll be home Sunday, so we can talk more then."**

**"Fine," I said. "See you then."**

**"See you. And Suze?"**

**"Yeah, Doc - I mean, David?"**

**"Be careful, okay? That Diego - the guy from that book, who supposedly killed Jesse? - the seemed kind of ... mean. You might want to watch your back or ... well, whatever."**

"Did you and Suze discuss Maria before this?" Helen frowned.

"No."

"Then how did you figure there might be possibility Diego might come back as well?"

"I had a hunch..." David shrugged.

"God I hope your hunch was wrong," Helen muttered.

**Whatever was right.**

**But I didn't say so to Doc. Instead, I said goodbye. What else could I say? Felix Diego isn't the half of it, sonny? I was too upset even to entertain the idea that I might possibly have a second hostile spirit to deal with.**

Helen and Andy worried for her instead.

**But I didn't even know what upset was until Spike came scrambling through my open window, looked around expectantly, and meowed...**

"Yes that monster would make me upset as well," Brad grumbled.

**And Jesse didn't show up.**

**Not even after I called out his name.**

**They don't, as a rule. Ghosts, I mean. Come when you call them.**

**But for the most part, Jesse does. Although lately he's been showing up before I even had a chance to call him, when I've only thought about calling him. Then wham , next thing I knew, there he was.**

**Except not this time.**

**Nothing. Not a flicker.**

"Oh Susie..."

**Well, I said to myself as I fed Spike his can of food and tried to remain calm. That's okay. I mean, it doesn't mean anything. Maybe he's busy. I mean, that was his skeleton down there. Maybe he's following it to wherever they're taking it. To the morgue or whatever. It's probably very traumatic, watching people dig up your body. Jesse didn't know anything about Hinduism and karma. At least, that I knew of. To him, his body had probably been a lot more than just a vessel for his soul.**

"I think my body is a lot more than a vessel for my soul as well," Jake muttered, "and I hope to never experience watching someone dig it up."

**That's where he was. The morgue. Watching what they did with his remains.**

"Not if Suze is upset," Andy shook his head. "He would come instantly for her."

**But when the hours passed, and it got dark out, and Spike, who usually goes out prowling at night for small vermin and any Chihuahuas he can find, actually climbed onto my bed, where I sat leafing sightlessly through magazines, and butted his head against my hand...**

"Oh no," Helen felt tears prickling.

**Well, that's when I knew.**

**That's when I knew something was really, really wrong. Because that cat hates my guts, even though I'm the one who feeds him. If he's climbing up onto my bed and butting his head against my hand, well, I'm sorry, that means the universe as I know it is crumbling.**

**Because Jesse isn't coming back.**

"Oh baby girl," Helen murmured, "he'll come back you'll see."

**Except, I kept telling myself as my panic mounted, he promised. He swore .**

**But as the minutes ticked past and there was still no sign of him, I knew. I just knew. He was gone. They'd found his body, and that meant he was no longer missing, and that meant there was no need for him to hang around my room. Not anymore, just like I'd tried to explain to him last night.**

**Only he had sounded so sure ... so sure that that wasn't it. He had laughed. He had laughed when I first said it, like it was ridiculous.**

**But then where was he? If he wasn't gone - to heaven, or to his next life (not to hell; there's no place, I'm sure, for Jesse in hell, if there is a hell) - then where was he?**

**I tried calling my dad. Not on the phone or anything, because of course my dad can't be reached that way, being dead. I tried calling to him wherever he was, out there on the astral plane.**

Helen gritted her teeth, next time she sees Pete she was going to knock his teeth out – how dare he not come and comfort their child?

**Only of course he didn't come, either. But then, he never does. Well, sometimes he does. But rarely, and not this time.**

And she'll break his neck, he's dead it won't hurt for long or kill him again.

**I just want you to know that I don't normally freak out like this. I mean, normally, I am very much a woman of action. Something happens and, well, I go kick some butts. That's how it usually works.**

Brad shuddered while Helen just sighed.

**But this ...**

**For some reason, I couldn't think straight. I really couldn't. I was just sitting there in my hunter green lounging pyjamas, going, what should I do? What should I do ?**

"Get some sleep and clear your head or you won't be able to think properly," Andy advised the book.

**Seriously. It was not good.**

**Which was why I did what I did next. If I couldn't figure out what to do myself, well, I needed someone to tell me what to do. And I knew just the someone who could.**

**I had to talk quietly because of course by that time it was past eleven, and everyone in the house but me was asleep.**

**"Is Father Dominic there?" I asked.**

Andy and Helen couldn't help but scowl at the fact Suze couldn't confide in them. Helen shook her jealousy off and remained grateful that at least Suze had someone but Andy couldn't help but remain jealous – he wanted his stepdaughter to be able to come to him first, not her headmaster.

**The person on the other end of the phone - an older man, from the sound of it - went, "What's that, honey? I can barely hear you."**

**"Father Dominic," I said, speaking as loudly as I dared. "Please, I need to speak to Father Dominic right away. Is he there?"**

**"Sure, honey," the man on the phone said. Then I heard him yell, "Dom! Hey, Dom! Phone for you!"**

"Dom?" Jake repeated amused.

**Dom? How dare that man call Father Dominic Dom ? Talk about disrespectful.**

David nodded in agreement while Brad rolled his eyes.

**But all my indignation melted when I heard Father Dominic's soft, deep voice. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed him, not seeing him every day over the summer like I do during the school year. **

Helen cooed a little at that while Brad looked revolted at the heavily sentimental moment. Andy's jealous scowl deepened.

**"Hello?"**

**"Father Dom," I said. No, I didn't say it. I'll admit it: I wept it. I was a basket case.**

"Oh sweetie, no you're not," Helen murmured, "you're grieving, it's perfectly normal."

**"Susannah?" Father Dominic sounded shocked. "What's wrong? Why are you crying? Are you all right?"**

**"Yes," I said. All right, not said: sobbed. "It's not me. It's J-Jesse."**

**"Jesse?" Father Dom's voice took on the note it always did when the subject of Jesse came up. It'd taken him awhile to warm up to Jesse. I guess I could see why. Father D is not only a priest, he's also the principal of a Catholic school. He's not supposed to approve of stuff like girls and guys sharing a bedroom . . . even if the guy is, you know, dead.**

Jake and Brad's lips twitched at that but they didn't laugh due to the sombre mood.

**And I could understand it, because it's different with mediators than it is with everyone else. Everyone else just walks through ghosts. They do it all the time, and they don't even know it. Oh, maybe they feel a cold spot, or they think they've glimpsed something out of the corner of their eye, but when they turn around, no one is there.**

**It's different for mediators. For us, ghosts are made up of matter, not shrouds of mist. I can't put my hand through Jesse, though anyone else could. Well, anyone else but Jack and Father Dom.**

**So it's understandable why Father Dom's never been too wild about Jesse, even though the guy's saved my life more times than I can count. Because whatever else he is, Jesse's still a guy, and he's living in my bedroom, and . . . well, you get the picture.**

**Not, of course, that there'd been anything going on - much to my chagrin.**

The brothers rolled their eyes at that.

**The thing was, now there never would be. I mean, now I'd never even know if something could have happened. Because he's gone.**

**I didn't mention any of this to Father Dom, of course. **

"I don't think Father D would approve," Jake muttered.

**I just told him what had happened, about Maria and the knife and the bugs, and about Clive Clemmings being dead and the missing portrait, and how they'd found Jesse's body and now he was gone.**

"At least she told _someone_," Helen grumbled.

**"And he promised me," I finished, somewhat incoherently, because I was crying so hard. "He swore that wasn't it that that wasn't what was holding him here. But now he's gone, and - "**

**Father Dominic's voice was soothing and controlled in comparison to my hiccupy ramblings.**

**"All right, Susannah," he said. "I understand. I understand. Obviously there are forces at work here that are beyond Jesse's control and, well, beyond yours, too, I might add. I'm glad you called me. You were right to call me. Listen, now, and do exactly as I say."**

**I sniffled. It felt so good - I can't even describe to you how good it felt - to have someone telling me what to do.**

Everyone raised their eyebrows at that. Suze wanted someone to tell her what to do?

**Really. Ordinarily the last thing I want is to be told what to do. But in this case, I really, really appreciated it. I clung to the phone, waiting breathlessly for Father Dominic's instructions.**

"Oh Susie," Helen murmured.

**"You're in your room, I suppose?" Father D said.**

**I nodded, realized he couldn't see me, and said, "Yes."**

**"Good. Wake your family and tell them exactly what you just told me. Then get out of the house. Get out of that house, Susannah, just as quickly as you can."**

Andy face palmed. There was no way Suze would do that. He definitely needed to have a word with Father Dominic about his steamrolling habit when it came to these things.

"Why didn't she listen to him?!" Helen shrieked.

**I took the phone away from my ear and looked at the receiver as if it had just started bleating in my ear like a sheep. Seriously. Because that would have made about as much sense as what Father Dom just said.**

The boys snickered at that.

**I put the receiver back to my ear.**

**"Susannah?" Father Dom was saying. "Did you hear me? I am perfectly serious about this. One man is already dead. I do not doubt that someone in your family will be next if you do not get them out of there."**

Everyone shuddered at that.

**I know I was a wreck and all. But I wasn't that much of a wreck.**

"Susannah!"

**"Father D," I said. "I can't tell them -"**

"Yes you can!"

**"Yes, you can, Susannah," Father Dominic said. "I always thought it was wrong of you to keep your gift a secret from your mother all these years. It's time you told her."**

"I agree!"

**"As if ," I said, into the phone.**

**"Susannah," Father D said. "The insects were only the beginning. If this de Silva woman is taking demonic possession of your household, horrors such as ... well, horrors such as you or I could never even imagine are going to begin -"**

Everyone shuddered again.

**"Demonic possession of my household?" I gripped the phone tighter. "Listen, Father D, she may have got my boyfriend, but she is not getting my house."**

Brad choked on his own spit, Jake raised an eyebrow, Helen squealed, and David looked gobsmacked at the book. Andy laughed, "I don't recall Jesse asking her out just yet," he grinned.

**Father Dominic sounded tired. "Susannah," he said. "Please, just do as I say. Get yourself and your family out of there, before harm comes to any of you. **

"What? He didn't notice the boyfriend title?" Brad asked.

"I think he had more important things on his mind, like your safety," David pointed out. He wondered how Brad's world could be so small that the boyfriend thing is all what he could think about.

**I understand that you are upset about Jesse, but the fact is, Susannah, that he is dead and you, at least for the time being, are still alive. We've got to do whatever we can to see that you remain that way. I will leave here now, but I'm a six-hour drive away. I promise I will be there in the morning. A thorough administration of holy water should drive away any evil spirits remaining in the house, but -"**

"So that's why Father D virtually drowned my room in the stuff!"

**Spike had padded across the room toward me. I thought he was going to bite me, as usual, but he didn't. Instead, he trotted right up to my face and let out a very loud, very plaintive cry.**

**"Good God," Father Dominic cried into the phone. "Is that her? Is she there already?"**

No one could help it, they had to laugh at that.

**I reached out and scratched Spike behind his one remaining ear, amazed he was even letting me touch him. "No," I said. "That was Spike. He misses Jesse."**

**Father Dominic said, "Susannah, I know how painful this must be for you. But you must know that wherever Jesse is now, he's better off than he's been for the past hundred and fifty years, living in limbo between this world and the next. I know it's difficult, but you must try to be happy for him, and know that, above all, he would want you to take care of yourself, Susannah. He would want you to keep yourself and your family safe - "**

"He would," David agreed firmly.

"How soon can Suze marry the guy?"

"Dad! Not you too!" Brad cried out horrified.

"I can't help it! If you were all girls that's the sort of man I would want you to marry!"

All three boys looked horrified at the idea of them being girls – good lord what on earth would be their names Bradlina? Davina?

**As I listened to Father Dom, I realized he was right. That was what Jesse would have wanted. And there I was, sitting around in a pair of lounging pyjamas when there was work to be done.**

"She's sorting herself out, good," Helen murmured.

**"Father D," I said, interrupting him. "In the cemetery, over at the Mission. Are there any de Silvas buried there?"**

"NO!"

"What?" Brad asked, it wasn't like David to shout like that.

"She's going to meet Maria at the cemetery!"

"Goddaminit! Queen of the Dead is going to get herself killed!"

Everyone was suddenly overwhelmed with worry and fear that they – Andy – couldn't be bothered to correct Brad on his language.

**Father Dominic, startled from his safety-first lecture, said, "I - de Silva? Really, Susannah, I don't know. I don't think -"**

**"Oh, wait," I said. "I keep forgetting, she married a Diego. There's a Diego crypt, isn't there?" I tried to picture the cemetery, which was a small one, surrounded by high walls, directly behind the basilica down at the Mission where Father Dominic works and I go to school. There are only a small number of graves there, mainly of the monks who had first worked with Junipero Serra, the guy who'd founded the Carmel Mission back in the 1700s.**

**But a few wealthy landowners in the 1800s had managed to get a mausoleum or two squeezed in by donating a sizeable portion of their fortunes to the church.**

**And the biggest one - if I remembered correctly from the time Mr. Walden, our World Civ teacher, had taken us to the cemetery to give us a taste of our local history- had the word Diego carved into the door.**

"Why did I have to send our children to a school with a cemetery?" Andy moaned.

**"Susannah," Father Dominic said. For the first time, there was a note of something other than urgency in his voice. Now he sounded frightened. "Susannah, I know what you are thinking, and I. . . I forbid it! You are not to go near that cemetery, do you understand me? You are not to go near that crypt! It is much too dangerous..."**

"Listen to Father Dominic!" Helen pleaded the book.

**Just the way I like it.**

"That's it she's grounded!" Helen snapped to her husband who nodded in agreement.

**But that's not what I said out loud. Aloud I said, "Okay, Father D. You're right. I'll wake my mom up. I'll tell her everything. And I'll get everyone out of the house."**

"Susannah! I didn't raise you to be a liar!"

**Father Dominic was so astonished, he didn't say anything for a minute. When he was finally able to find his voice, he said, "Good. Well . . . good, then. Yes. Get everyone out of the house. Don't do anything foolish, Susannah, like call upon the ghost of this woman, until I get there. Promise me."**

"Don't just believe her!"

**Promise me. Like promises mean anything anymore. Look at Jesse. He'd promised me he wasn't going to go away, and where was he?**

"That's not his fault!"

**Gone. Gone forever.**

**And I'd been too much of a coward ever to tell him how I really felt about him.**

Helen's anger softened a little, "oh Susie..."

**And now I'd never get the chance to.**

**"Sure," I said to Father Dominic. "I promise."**

**But I think even he knew I didn't mean it.**

"I don't know, Father D is a bit naive and gullible," Jake said gloomily.

"Well, it's your turn Dad," David mumbled, "that's the end of it."

Reluctantly Andy took the book and turned the page for the next entry.


	9. Chapter 9

_Author's Note: this chapter is dedicated to __Esmerelda Diana Parker – thanks for the suggestion and support. _

**Ghost busting is a tricky business.**

"We gathered," Jake said dryly.

**You'd think it would be easy, right? Like if a ghost's bothering you, you just, you know, bust its chops and it'll go away.**

"Not after what we read," Brad snorted.

**Yeah. Doesn't work that way much, unfortunately.**

**Which is not to say that busting someone's chops does not have therapeutic value. Especially for someone who, like me, might be grieving. Because that's what I was doing, of course. Grieving for Jesse.**

Everyone closed their eyes for a moment and held a minute silence for Jesse.

**Except ****-**** and I don't know if this applies to all mediators or just me ****-**** I don't really grieve like a normal person. I mean, I sat around and cried my eyes out after the realization first hit me that I was never going to see Jesse again.**

**But then something happened. I stopped feeling sad and started feeling mad.**

"Sounds normal Suze to me," Brad muttered.

**Really mad. There I was, and it was after midnight, and I was extremely angry.**

"Bugger!"

**It wasn't that I didn't want to keep my promise to Father D. I really did. But I just couldn't.**

**Any more than Jesse could apparently keep his promise to me.**

**So it was only about fifteen minutes after my phone call to Father D that I emerged from my bathroom ****-**** Jesse was gone, of course, so I could have changed in my room, but old habits die hard ****–**

"Probably for the best, what if another pervy ghost came along?" Jake said.

"Jesse isn't pervy!" Helen snapped.

**In full ghost-busting regalia, including my tool belt and hooded sweatshirt, which even I will admit might seem a bit excessive for California in July. But it was nightime, and that mist rolling in from the ocean in the wee hours can be chilly.**

**I don't want you to think I didn't give serious thought to what Father D had said about my telling my mom everything and getting her and the Ackermans out of there. I really did think about it.**

"I suppose that's something," Helen grumbled.

**It's just that the more I thought about it, the more ridiculous it sounded. I mean, first of all, my mom is a television news journalist. She simply is not the type to believe in ghosts. She only believes in what she can see or, barring that, what has been proven to exist by science. The one time I did try to tell her, she totally did not understand. And I realized then that she never would.**

"She was a babbling toddler! Of course I couldn't understand what she was saying!"

**So how could I possibly go busting into her bedroom and tell her and her new husband that they have to get out of the house because a vengeful spirit is after me? She would be on the phone to her therapist back in New York, looking for communities where I could go to "rest," so fast you wouldn't believe it.**

"Err..." Helen smiled a little sheepishly. Okay there was some grain of truth in Suze's rambling.

**So that plan was out.**

**But that was all right, because I had a much better one. One that, really, I should have thought of right away, but I guess that whole seeing-the-skeleton-of-the-guy-I-love-being-hauled -out-of-a-hole-in-my-backyard thing really got to me, and so I didn't think of it until I was on the phone with Father D.**

**But once I'd come up with it, I realized it really was the perfect plan. Instead of waiting for Maria to come to me, I was simply going to go to her and, well. . .**

**Send her back from where she came.**

**Or reduce her to a mound of quivering gelatinous goo. Whichever came first.**

"My money is on the mound of quivering gelatinous goo," Jake said immediately.

"Nah," Brad disagreed, "I bet Suze will get beat up some, and then rescued by Jesse."

"Five bucks," Jake offered.

"Deal!"

"What have I told you boys about gambling?!"

"C'mon Dad!"

"Just this once!"

"No! Bet cancelled!"

And then before his sons could argue Andy continued reading.

**Because even though ghosts are, of course, already dead, they can still feel pain, just as people who lose a limb can still feel it itching from time to time. Ghosts know, when you plunge a knife into their sternum, that it should hurt, and so it does. The wound will even bleed for a while.**

**Then, of course, they get over the shock of it, and the wound disappears. Which is discouraging, since the wounds they, in their turn, inflict upon me do not heal half so fast.**

**But whatever. It works. More or less.**

**The wound Maria de Silva had inflicted on me wasn't visible, but that didn't matter. What I was going to do to her certainly would be. With any luck, that husband of hers would be around and I could do the same to him.**

"Susannah!"

**And what was going to happen if things didn't work out that way, and the two of them got the best of me?**

Helen moaned, she didn't want to think about it.

**Well, that was the coolest part of the whole thing: I didn't even care. Really. I had cried out every last ounce of emotion in me, and now, I simply didn't care. It didn't matter. It really didn't.**

"Grounded, forever, she is grounded until she learns the importance of living," Andy growled.

**I was numb.**

**So numb that, when I swung my legs out my bedroom window and landed on the roof of the front porch - my usual form of exit when I didn't want anyone inside to be aware I was up to something ****–**

"That's it! I'm fencing that bit!" Andy declared.

**I didn't even care about the things that normally really mean stuff to me, like the moon, for instance, hanging over the bay, casting everything into black and gray shadow, and the scent of the giant pine to one side of the porch. It didn't matter. None of it mattered.**

**I had just crossed the porch roof and was preparing to swing down from it when a glow that was brighter than the moon but much weaker than, say, the overhead in my bedroom, appeared behind me.**

"Oh no! Maria must have had the same thought!" Helen worried.

**Okay, I'll admit it. I thought it was Jesse. Don't ask me why. I mean, it went against all logic. But whatever. My heart gave a happy lurch and I spun around...**

"Please let it be Jesse, please," Helen pleaded the book.

**Maria **

"Damn!"

"Mom!"

**Was standing not five feet from me on the sloping, pine needle-strewn roof. She looked just as she had in that portrait over Clive Clemmings's desk: elegant and otherworldly.**

**Well, and why not? She isn't of this world, now, is she?**

Brad snorted.

**"Going somewhere, Susannah?" she asked me in her brittle, only slightly accented English.**

**"I was," I said, pushing my sweatshirt hood back. I had pulled my hair into a ponytail. Unattractive, I know, but I needed all the peripheral vision I could get. "But now that you're here, I see I don't have to. I can kick your bony butt here just as well as down at your stinking grave."**

Helen moaned, this was not going to end well, she could tell.

**Maria raised her delicately arched black eyebrows. "Such language," she said. I swear, if she'd had a fan on her, she'd have been using it, just like Scarlett O'Hara. "And what could I possibly have done to warrant such an unladylike tongue-lashing? You'll catch more flies with honey, you know, than vinegar."**

Helen frowned, David stared at the book horrified, and Brad blinked dumbly, "Haven't I heard that before?" he asked Jake.

"Yeah you have," Jake frowned, "Slater said it to Suze before."

"Huh."

"That-"

What David had then said shocked everyone in the room. Never before in their lives had they heard something so foul come out of something so innocent. "I blame you," Andy glowered at his eldest boys.

"David!"

"I apologise," David pushed his glasses back up his nose. "But what Maria had just said then was what Paul had said earlier."

The horrifying realisation dawned on the family. "But how..."

"Jack is his brother it is likely he also inherited the Mediator gene," David theorised.

"Well we won't know unless we read," Andy said.

**"You know good and well what you did," I said, taking a step toward her. "Let's start with the bugs in the orange juice."**

Brad and Helen shuddered.

**She reached up and coyly smoothed back a strand of shining black hair that had escaped from her side ringlets.**

"Cow," Brad muttered.

**"Yes," she said. "I thought you might like that one."**

**"But killing Dr. Clemmings?" I took another step forward. "That was even better. Because I imagine you didn't have to kill him at all, did you? You just wanted the painting, right? The one of Jesse?"**

David narrowed his eyes remembering a certain ritual Suze did with someone's picture.

**She made what in magazines they call a moue out of her mouth: you know, she kind of pursed her lips and looked pleased with herself at the same time.**

"Punch her," Jake encouraged the book.

**"Yes," she said. "At first I wasn't going to kill him. But when I saw the portrait ****- ****my portrait ****-**** above his desk, well, how could I not? He is not even related to me. Why should he have such a fine painting ****-**** and in his miserable little office, as well? That painting used to grace my dining room. It hung in splendour over a table with seating for twenty."**

"What a vain bitch!"

"Mom!"

**"Yeah, well," I said. "My understanding is that none of your descendants wanted it. Your kids turned out to be nothing but a bunch of lowlifes and goons. Sounds like your parenting skills left a bit to be desired."**

"Suze," Helen groaned.

**For the first time, Maria actually looked annoyed. **

"Probably one of those mothers who think their babies can do no wrong," Andy muttered darkly.

**She started to say something, but I interrupted her.**

**"What I don't get," I said, "is what you wanted the painting for. The one of Jesse. I mean, what good is it to you? Unless you only took it to get me in trouble."**

"No, it's for something far worse," David whispered.

**"Wouldn't that be reason enough?" Maria inquired with a sneer.**

**"I suppose so," I said. "Except that it didn't work."**

**"Yet," Maria said, with a certain amount of emphasis. "There is still time."**

**I shook my head. I just shook my head as I looked at her. "Gosh," I said, mostly to myself. "Gosh, I'm going to hurt you."**

"Anger management classes," Andy muttered though quite frankly he agreed with his stepdaughter.

**"Oh, yes." Maria tittered behind one lace-gloved hand. "I forgot. You must be very angry with me. He's gone, isn't he? Hector, I mean. That must be a great blow for you. I know how fond you were of him."**

"Punch her."

**I could have jumped her right then. I probably should have. But it occurred to me that she might, you know, have some information on Jesse - how he was, or even where he was. Lame, I know, but look at it this way: on top of the whole, you know, love thing, he was one of the best friends I ever had.**

"That's what love can be like," Helen smiled fondly at Andy.

**"Yeah," I said. "Well, I guess slave-runners aren't really my cup of tea. That is who you married instead, right? A slave-runner. Your father must have been so proud."**

**That wiped the grin right off her face.**

The brothers grinned at that.

**"You leave my father out of this," she snarled.**

"Ooh touchy," Brad smirked.

**"Oh, why?" I asked. "Tell me something, is he sore at you? Your dad, I mean. You know, for having Jesse killed? Because I imagine he would be. I mean, basically, thanks to you, the de Silva family line ran out. And your kids with that Diego dude turned out to be, as we've already discussed, major losers. I bet whenever you run into your dad out there, you know, on the spiritual plane, he doesn't even say hi anymore, does he? That's gotta hurt."**

"Is she trying to get herself killed?!" Helen despaired.

**I'm not sure how much of that, if any, Maria actually understood. Still, she seemed plenty mad.**

"Anyone would after that," Andy muttered.

**"You!" she cried. "I warned you! I told you to make your family stop with their digging, but did you listen to me? It is your fault you've lost your precious Hector. If you had only listened, he would be here still. But no. You think, because you are this mediator - this special person who can communicate with spirits - that you are better than us ... better than me! But you are nothing - nothing, do you hear? Who are the Simons? Who are they? No one! I, Maria Teresa de Silva, am a descendant of royalty - of kings and princes!"**

"Through a bastard line of a bastard line," David muttered unimpressed.

"How dare that bitch..." Helen snarled incoherently.

**I just laughed. I mean, seriously. Come on.**

"True," Jake agreed, his lips twitching in amusement.

**"Oh, yeah," I said. "And that sure was some princely behaviour, killing your boyfriend like that."**

"Doesn't she mean princessy?" Brad asked dumbly.

"Nah, the bitch is already a spoilt princess," Jake said.

**Maria's scowl was like a dark storm cloud over her head. "Hector died," she hissed in a scary voice, "because he dared to break off our betrothal. He thought to disgrace me in front of everyone. Me! Knowing, as he did, of the royal lineage running through my blood. To suggest that I would -"**

"Isn't the same royal lineage is running through Jesse's blood?" Andy asked.

"Yeah but I don't think Maria c-"

"Oh my God, my daughter is going to marry a prince!" Helen interrupted ecstatically.

The Ackerman men wondered if this diary reading session was beginning to take its toll on Helen.

**Whoa. This was a new one. "Wait a minute. He did what ?"**

"Hang on what?" Brad asked.

"Oh yeah, we were too caught up on the whole royal thing," David said sheepishly, "it looks like Jesse didn't get killed on his way to marry Maria but on his way to break off the engagement."

Andy hadn't seen Helen this happy since he proposed to her – it was rather insulting.

**But Maria was off on a rant.**

**"As if I, Maria de Silva, would allow myself to be so humiliated. He sought to return my letters and asked for his own - and his ring - back. He could not, he said, marry me, after what he had heard about me and Diego." She laughed, not pleasantly. "As if he did not know to whom he was speaking! As if he did not know he was speaking to a de Silva!"**

"I'm pretty sure he did know," Jake rolled his eyes.

**I cleared my throat. "Um," I said. "I'm pretty sure he knew. I mean, that was his last name, too. Weren't the two of you cousins or something?"**

"Gross" Brad muttered.

**Maria made a face. "Yes. I am ashamed to say I shared a name - and grandparents - with that -" She called Jesse something in Spanish that did not sound at all flattering. "He did not know with whom he was trifling. There was not a man in the county who would not have killed for the honour of marrying me."**

"I would kill in order not to marry that psycho," Jake muttered.

**"And it certainly appears," I couldn't help pointing out, "that at least one man in the county was killed for refusing that honour."**

"Poor bloke," Andy mumbled.

**"Why shouldn't he have died?" Maria demanded. "For insulting me in such a manner?"**

Everyone spluttered furiously over that – what sort of nutter was this woman? No one should die over an insult!

**"Um," I said, "how about because murder is illegal? And because having a guy killed because he doesn't want to marry you is the act of a freaking lunatic, which is exactly what you are. Funny how that part didn't trickle down through the annals of history. But don't worry. I'll make sure I get the word out."**

**Maria's face changed. Before, she'd looked disgusted and irritated. Now she looked murderous.**

Helen groaned at that, why? Why her daughter? Why should any person have to suffer this?

**Which was kind of funny. If this chick thought anybody in the world cared about what some prissy broad had done a century and a half ago, she was mightily mistaken. She had managed to kill the one person to whom this piece of information might have been remotely interesting - Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D.**

"And Dad, and Dave," Jake pointed out, "good thing Maria wasn't aware of this or we would lose you two as well."

Andy and David paled at this while Helen glowered murderously at Jake.

**But she was still apparently high on the whole "we de Silvas are descended from Spanish royalty" thing, since she whirled on me, petticoats flying, and went, in this scary voice, "Stupid girl! I said to Diego that you were far too much of a fool to cause trouble for us, but I see now that I was wrong. You are everything I have heard about mediators - interfering, loathsome creature!"**

**I was flattered. I truly was. No one had ever called me loathsome before.**

"Susannah!"

**"If I'm loathsome," I said, "what does that make you? Oh, wait, don't tell me, I already know. A two-faced backstabbing bitch, right?"**

"Susannah!"

**The next thing I knew, she'd pulled that knife from her sleeve and was once more pointing it at my throat.**

Helen screamed and clutched Andy while he wondered why Suze couldn't have a nice peaceful and quiet life.

**"I will not stab you in the back," Maria assured me. "It is your face I intend to carve."**

David shuddered at that while Helen whimpered.

**"Go ahead," I said. I reached out and seized the wrist of the hand that was clutching the knife. "You want to know what your big mistake was?" She grunted as, with a neat move I'd learned in Tae Kwan Do, I twisted her arm behind her back.**

"I thought she did kickboxing?" Jake said confused.

"She did Tae Kwan Do when she was eleven," Helen explained grimly.

**"Saying my losing Jesse was my fault. Because I was feeling sorry for you before. But now I'm just mad."**

Jake rubbed his hands gleefully thinking of his bet.

**Then, sinking one knee into Maria de Silva's spine, I sent her sprawling, facedown, onto the porch roof.**

"Damn," Brad hissed.

"She deserved it," David muttered darkly.

**"And when I'm mad," I said as I pried the knife from her fingers with my free hand, "I don't really know what comes over me. But I just sort of start hitting people. Really, really hard."**

Brad and Jake snorted in amusement while Andy silently despaired at his stepdaughter's violent streak.

**Maria wasn't taking any of this quietly. She was shrieking her head off - mostly in Spanish, though, so I just ignored her. I was the only one who could hear her, anyway.**

**"I told my mom's therapist about it," I informed her as I flung the knife, as hard as I could, into the backyard, still keeping her pinned down with the weight of my knee. "And you know what she said? She said the trigger to my rage mechanism is oversensitive."**

"Well it _is_!" Helen muttered. "But right now that cow deserves it."

**Now that I was rid of the knife, I leaned forward and, with the hand I wasn't using to keep Maria's arm bent back against her spine, I seized a handful of those glossy black ringlets and jerked her head toward me.**

**"But you know what I said to her?" I asked Maria. "I said, it's not that the trigger to my rage mechanism is oversensitive. It's that people . . . just ... keep ... pissing ... me ... off."**

**To emphasize each of the last six syllables of that sentence, I rammed Maria de Silva's face into the roof tiles. **

Brad very reluctantly handed Jake five dollars behind Andy's back.

**When I dragged her head up after the sixth time, she was bleeding heavily from the nose and mouth. I observed this with great detachment, like it was someone else who had caused it and not me.**

**"Oh," I said. "Look at that. That is just so interfering and loathsome of me."**

Brad and Jake snorted again causing Andy to glower at them. "It's not funny," he hissed at the boys.

**Then I smashed her face against the roof a few more times, saying, "This one is for jumping me while I was asleep and holding a knife to my throat. And this one is for making Dopey eat bugs,**

Brad blinked in surprise he didn't think – with the whole Jesse thing going on – that he would come into the list of important gripes Suze had with Maria.

**and this one is for making me have to clean up bug guts , and this one is for killing Clive , and oh yeah, this one is for Jesse - "**

**I won't say I was out of my mind with rage. I was mad. I was plenty mad. But I knew exactly what I was doing.**

"Not a good thing," Andy muttered, "though the woman deserved some of it, you're better than that."

**And it wasn't pretty. Hey, I'll be the first to admit that. I mean, violence is never the answer, right? Unless of course the person you're beating on is already dead.**

"It doesn't matter if they're dead or not!"

**But just because a hundred and fifty years ago this chick had had a good friend of mine offed, for no other reason than that he had very rightly wanted out of a marriage with her, she didn't deserve to have her face bashed in.**

**No way. What she deserved was to have every bone in her body broken.**

Everyone muttered their agreement.

**Unfortunately, however, when I finally let go of Maria's hair and stood up to do just that, I noticed a sudden glow to my left.**

"Jesse?" Helen asked hopefully.

**Jesse, I thought, my heart doing another one of those speeding-up, skidding things.**

"Like mother like daughter," Andy said amused.

**But of course it wasn't Jesse. When I turned my head, what I saw materializing there was a very tall man in a dark moustache and goatee, dressed in clothes that were somewhat similar to Jesse's, only a lot fancier - like he was a costume party Zorro or something. His snug black trousers had this elaborate silver filigree pattern going down the side of each leg, and his white shirt had those puffy sleeves pirates always wear in movies. He had a lot of silver scrollwork on his holster, too, and all around the brim of his black cowboy hat.**

Helen slumped in disappointment while Brad sniggered, "how stylish."

**And he didn't look very happy to see me.**

**"Okay," I said, putting my hands on my hips. "Wait, don't tell me. Diego, am I right?"**

"Please let it just be Jesse's much nicer and very angry with Maria, uncle," David pleaded quietly.

**Under the pencil-thin moustache, his upper lip curled.**

"Damn!"

"David!"

**"I thought I told you," he said to Maria, who was sitting up and holding her sleeve to her bleeding nose, "to leave this one to me."**

"Not good," Jake muttered.

**Maria was making a lot of very unattractive snuffling noises. You could tell she'd never had her nose broken before, because she wasn't tipping her head back to stop the bleeding.**

**Amateur.**

Brad snorted, even _h_e knew that!

**"I thought she might be more amusing," Maria said in a voice laced with pain - and regret -"to play with."**

Everyone looked at the book in disgust, "Ooh, when I get my hands on her..." Helen muttered.

**Diego shook his head disgustedly.**

"Even he doesn't like his wife," Jake mumbled.

**"No," he said. "With mediators we do not play. I thought that was made clear to you from the start. They are entirely too dangerous."**

"Hmm..." a million thoughts started racing through David's mind.

**"I'm sorry, Diego." Maria's voice took on a whiny quality I had not heard before. I realized she was one of those girls who has a "guy" voice, one she uses only when men are around.**

"Urgh!" Jake groaned.

**"I should have done as you said."**

**It was my turn to be disgusted.**

"Don't blame her," Jake said.

**"Hello," I said to Maria. "This is the twenty-first century. Women are allowed to think for themselves now, you know."**

"Thank God," Helen muttered.

**Maria just glared at me over the sleeve she was holding to her bleeding nose.**

**"Kill her for me," she said in that whiny little-girl voice.**

The swear words muttered by the entire family would have made Father Dominic blush for a week.

**Diego took a step toward me, wearing an expression that told me he was only too happy to oblige his lady love.**

"Of course," Jake muttered grimly.

"That son of a **w**hore!" David shouted angrily.

"David!"

"What? He is!" David protested. "He was the son of a prostitute and who knows that managed to climb up the social ladder."

"That doesn't mean you can use such language!" Andy said appalled.

**"Oh, what?" I said. I wasn't even scared. I didn't care anymore. The numbness in my heart had pretty much taken over my whole body. "You always do what she tells you? You know, we have a word for that now. It's called being whipped."**

"Susannah! Now is not the time to make smart mouthed comments!"

**Apparently he was either unacquainted with this expression, or he just didn't care, since he kept coming at me. Diego was wearing spurs, and they clanged ominously against the roof tiles as he approached.**

Helen whimpered at that**.**

**"You know," I said, holding my ground. "I gotta tell you. The goatee thing? Yeah, way over. And you know a little jewellery really does go a long way. Just something you might want to consider.**

"This man is trying to kill her and she's giving him _fashion advice_?" Andy said bewildered.

**I'm actually glad you stopped by, because I have a couple things I've been meaning to say to you. Number one, about your wife? Yeah, she's a skank. And number two, you know that whole thing where you killed Jesse and then buried his remains out back there? Yeah, way un-cool. Because you see, now I have to -"**

"My sister's an idiot," Jake muttered – they could all tell Diego was going to hurt Suze and what does she do? Talk, talk, and talk...urgh maybe David was the only one with brains in this family.

**Only I never got a chance to tell Felix Diego what I was going to have to do him. That's because he interrupted me. He said, in this deep and surprisingly menacing voice, for a guy with a goatee,**

"What does that have to do with anything?"

**"It has long been my conviction that the only good mediator is a dead one."**

"You met many mediators?" Jake asked "I thought you just occasionally came back to kill those who discovered the truth?"

**Then, before I could so much as twitch, he threw his arms around me. I thought he was trying to give me a hug or something, which would have been pretty weird.**

Everyone raised an eyebrow at that, really Suze, _really_?

**But that wasn't what he was doing at all. No, what he was doing, actually, was throwing me off the porch roof.**

Helen moaned despairingly.

**Oh, yes. He threw me right into the hole where the hot tub was supposed to go. Right where they'd uncovered Jesse's remains, just that afternoon...**

"Oh Jesus," Andy breathed.

**Which I thought was kind of ironic, actually. **

"A cruel irony," David murmured.

**At least, while I was still capable of thought.**

**Which wasn't for long, since I lost consciousness shortly after slamming into the ground.**

"I should have never dug that blasted hole!" Andy cried out before passing the book to Helen. "It's your turn."

"Please let something happy happen," Helen pleaded the diary before she turned the page and began the next entry.


	10. Chapter 10

**Here's the thing about mediators:**

**We're hard to kill.**

"Thank God," Helen cried out, "or I would be childless long before this."

**I'm serious. You wouldn't believe the number of times I've been knocked down, dragged, stomped on, punched, kicked, bitten, clawed, whacked on the head, held underwater, shot at, and, oh, yeah, thrown off roofs.**

Helen barely managed to choke all of this out – how could she have missed all of this?

**But have I ever died? Have I ever sustained a life-threatening injury?**

"By the sound of it plenty of times but death no," Andy muttered.

**No. I've broken bones ****-**** plenty of them. I've got scars galore.**

"They're so cool," Brad admitted a little reluctantly.

"Not the time," Jake said watching their stepmother warily.

**But the fact is, whoever ****- ****or whatever ****- ****created us mediators did give us one natural weapon, at least, in our fight against the undead. No, not superhuman strength, though that would have been handy. **

"And painful," Brad muttered darkly just picturing the punch Suze would have given him if she had superhuman strength.

**No, what we've got, Father Dom and I ****-**** and Jack, too, probably, although I doubt he's had an opportunity to test it out yet ****– **

"God, I hope not! The poor kid has been through enough as it is!"

**Is a hide tough enough to take all the abuse that gets heaped on us and then some.**

"But you shouldn't have to!" Helen exclaimed.

**Which was why even though by rights a fall like the one I took should have killed me, it didn't. Not even close.**

Everyone shuddered and thanked God.

**Not, of course, that Maria de Silva and her paramour didn't think they'd been successful. They must have, or they'd have stuck around to finish the job. But when I woke up hours later, groggy and with a headache you would not believe, they were nowhere to be seen.**

"Idiots."

**Clearly, I had won the first round. Well, in a manner of speaking, anyway. I mean, I wasn't dead, and that, in my book, is always a plus.**

"It shouldn't have to be, it should be a fact that, as a teenager, you take for granted," Helen said sadly.

**What I was was concussed. I knew right away because I get them all the time. Concussions, I mean.**

"WHAT?!"

**Well, all right, twice.**

"That doesn't make it better!"

**Anyway, it's not so pleasant, being concussed. Basically, you feel pukey and sore all over, but, not surprisingly, your head really hurts more than anything. In my case, it was even worse in that I'd been lying at the bottom of that hole for so long, the dew had had a chance to fall. It had collected on my clothes and soaked them through and made them feel very heavy. So dragging myself out of that pit Andy and Dopey had dug became a real chore.**

Andy and Brad flinched at that while Helen muttered quietly to herself about Suze needing to see a doctor.

**In fact, it was dawn before I finally managed to let myself back into the house ****-**** thank God Sleepy had left the front door unlocked when he'd come in from his big date.**

Helen and Andyslowly turned round and glared at their sheepish eldest, "C'mon," he argued, "it's Carmel – nothing bad is going to happen!"

"You don't know that!" Helen shrieked.

"In future, son, I would like you to lock up," Andy said firmly.

**Still, I had to climb all those stairs. It was pretty slow going. At least when I got to my room and was finally able to peel off all of my sodden, muddy clothes, I didn't have to worry, for once, about Jesse seeing me in my altogether.**

"Good," Jake muttered, foolishly hoping that Jesse would never see Suze in her altogether.

**Because of course Jesse was gone.**

Jake then felt guilty; he didn't want his sister to be _heartbroken_.

**I tried not to think about that as I crawled into bed and shut my eyes. This strategy ****-**** the not-thinking-about-Jesse-being-gone strategy ****-**** seemed to work pretty well. I was asleep, I think, before that thought had really had a chance to sink in again.**

"I think that had something to do with the concussion not the strategy," David murmured worriedly.

**I didn't wake up until well past eight. Apparently Sleepy had tried to get me up for work, but I was too far gone. **

"And Dad wouldn't let me throw water on her," Jake grumbled.

**They let me sleep in, I guess, because they all assumed I was still upset about what had happened the day before, about the skeleton they'd found in the backyard.**

"Well she _was_!"

**I only wish that was all I had to be upset about.**

"Oh Susie," Helen sighed mournfully.

**When the phone rang a little after nine and Andy called up the stairs that it was for me, I was already up, standing in my bathroom in my sweats, examining the enormous bruise that had developed beneath my bangs. **

Helen shuddered, she hated that bruise. Thank God, the doctor saw nothing worrying.

**I looked like an alien. **

Jake and Brad snorted at that.

**I'm not kidding. It was a wonder, really, I hadn't broken my neck.**

Everyone flinched at the idea.

**I was convinced that Maria and her boyfriend thought that's exactly what I'd done. It was the only reason I was still alive. The two of them were so cocky, they hadn't stuck around to make sure I was well and truly dead.**

"And thank God, or we would be reading something else entirely," Andy said.

**They'd obviously never met a mediator before. It takes a lot more than a fall off a roof to kill one of us.**

**"Susannah." Father Dominic's voice, when I picked up the phone, was filled with concern. "Thank God you're all right. I was so worried . . . But you didn't, did you? Go to the cemetery last night?"**

"No thankfully," Helen murmured.

**"No," I said. There hadn't been any reason to go there, in the end. The cemetery had come to me.**

**But I didn't say that to Father D.**

"Probably give him a heart attack if she did," Jake muttered.

**Instead, I asked, "Are you back in town?"**

**"I'm back. You didn't tell them, did you? Your family, I mean."**

"No," Helen frowned.

**"Um," I said, uncertainly.**

"Clever," Brad muttered.

**"Susannah, you must. You really must. They have a right to know. We're dealing with a very serious haunting here. You could be killed, Susannah ****-**** "**

Everyone shuddered – could there be a new topic in these books, one that didn't revolve round murder and violence?

**I refrained from mentioning that I'd actually already come pretty close.**

"Definitely give him a heart attack if she did."

**At that moment, the call waiting went off. I said, "Father D, can you hold on a second?" and hit the receiver.**

"I bet Father D hates that thing," Brad grinned.

**A high-pitched, vaguely familiar voice spoke in my ear, but for the life of me, I could not place it right away.**

"Cee Cee?" Jake asked.

"No, I don't think so," David shook his head, "Suze would know straight away."

**"Suze? Is that you? Are you all right? Are you sick or something?"**

**"Um," I said, extremely puzzled. "Yeah. I guess. Sort of. Who is this?"**

**The voice said, very indignantly, "It's me! Jack!"**

"Oh!"

**Oh, God. Jack. Work. Right.**

**"Jack," I said. "How did you get my home number?"**

"The phone book?" Brad suggested dryly.

**"You gave it to Paul," Jack said. "Yesterday. Don't you remember?"**

"She gave our number to that creeper!"

**I did not, of course. All I could really remember from yesterday was that Clive Clemmings was dead, Jesse's portrait was missing ...**

**And that Jesse, of course, was gone. Forever.**

**Oh, and the whole part where the ghost of Felix Diego tried to split my head open.**

Brad snorted, "How did that become an afterthought?"

"My daughter needs to sort out her priorities," Helen sighed.

**"Oh," I said. "Yeah. Okay. Look, Jack, I have someone on the other ****-**** "**

**"Suze," Jack interrupted. "You were supposed to teach me to do underwater somersaults today."**

Jake and Brad goggled at the book, Suze knew how to do underwater somersaults? Since when was she so awesome?

**"I know," I said. "I'm really sorry. I just ... I just really couldn't face coming in to work today, bud. I'm sorry. It's nothing against you or anything. I just really need a day off."**

"Good," Andy said gently, "the kid needs reassurance."

**"You sound so sad," Jack said, sounding pretty sad himself. "I thought you'd be really happy."**

"Eh?"

**"You did?" I wondered if Father D was still waiting on the other line or if he'd hung up in a huff. I was, I realized, treating him pretty badly. After all, he'd cut his little retreat short for me. "How come?"**

**"On account of how I - "**

**That's when I saw it. Just the faintest glow, over by the daybed. Jesse? Again my heart gave one of those lurches. It was really getting pathetic, how much I kept hoping, every time I saw the slightest shimmer, that it would be Jesse.**

"Oh Susie," Helen sighed.

**It wasn't.**

**It wasn't Maria or Diego either - thank God. Surely not even they would be bold enough to try to take a whack at me in broad daylight...**

"Cowards," Jake muttered.

**"Jack," I said, into the phone. "I have to go."**

**"Wait, Suze, I - "**

**But I'd hung up. That's because sitting there on my daybed, looking deeply unhappy, was Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D.**

**Just my luck: Wish for a Jesse. Get a Clive.**

Everyone snorted, they couldn't help it.

**"Oh," he said, blinking behind the lenses of his Coke-bottle-bottom glasses. He seemed almost as surprised to see me as I was to see him materialize there in my bedroom. "It's you ."**

"How polite," David muttered.

**I just shook my head. Sometimes my bedroom feels like Grand Central Station.**

"It better not be," Andy muttered, "I don't want ghosts there every minute disrupting her sleep and studying."

**"Well, I simply didn't - " Clive Clemmings fiddled with his bow tie. "I mean, when they said I should contact a mediator, I didn't ... I mean, I never expected - "**

**" ****- ****that the mediator would be me," I finished for him. "Yeah. I get that a lot."**

"She isn't exactly mystical and awe-inspiring, is she?" Andy agreed in amusement.

**"It's only," Clive said, apologetically, "that you're so ..."**

**I just glared at him. I really wasn't in the mood. Can you blame me? What with the concussion, and all?**

"Then go to the doctors!" Helen snapped.

**"That I'm so what?" I demanded. "Female? Is that it? Or are you going to try to convince me you're shocked by my preternatural intelligence?"**

"Oh come on! Just 'cause he called you Miss Ackerman doesn't make the guy a sexist!" Brad protested.

**"Err," Clive Clemmings said. "Young. I meant that ... it's just that you're so young."**

"See!"

"Poor bloke," Jake agreed.

**I sank down onto the window seat. Really, what had I ever done to deserve this? I mean, nobody wants to be visited by the spectre of a guy like Clive. I'm almost positive nobody ever wanted him to visit when he was alive. So why me?**

"Susannah!"

**Oh, yeah. The mediator thing.**

**"To what do I owe the pleasure, Clive?" I probably should have called him Dr. Clemmings, but I had too much of a headache to be respectful of my elders.**

"I'll forgive her just this once," Andy said.

**"Well, I hardly know," Clive said. "I mean, suddenly, Mrs. Lambert ****- **** that's my receptionist, don't you know? ****- **** she isn't answering when I call her, and when people telephone for me, well, she tells them . . . the most horrible thing, actually. I simply don't know what's come over her." dive cleared his throat. "You see, she's saying that I'm ****-**** "**

**"Dead," I finished for him.**

**Clive eyes grew perceptibly bigger behind his glasses.**

"Poor man," Andy sighed, "no one expects this."

**"Why," he said, "that's extraordinary. How could you know that? Well, yes, of course, you are the mediator, after all. They said you'd understand. But really, Miss Ackerman, I've had the most trying few days. I don't feel at all like myself, and I ****-**** "**

**"That," I interrupted him, "is because you're dead."**

"Susannah!"

**Ordinarily, I might have been a little nicer about it, but I guess I still felt a little kernel of resentment toward old Clive for his cavalier dismissal of my suggestion that Jesse might have been murdered.**

Helen just shook her head.

**"But that's not possible," Clive said. He tugged on his bow tie. "I mean, look at me. I am clearly here. You are speaking to me ****-****"**

**"Yeah," I said. "Because I'm a mediator, Clive. That's my job. To help people like you move on after they've . . . you know." Since he clearly did not know, I elaborated: "Croaked."**

**Clive blinked rapidly several times in succession. "I ... I ... Oh, dear."**

"Poor bloke," Jake murmured. Everyone seemed to be suffering in this one – Jack, Suze, Jesse, Brad, and now Clive.

**"Yeah," I said. "See? Now let's see if we can figure out why you're here and not in happy historian heaven. What's the last thing you remember?"**

Brad snorted, "Historian heaven," he muttered.

"Yes," David said dreamily, "wouldn't it be wonderful if it was next door to scientist heaven, all that knowledge..."

"Weirdo," Brad muttered.

"David I would prefer it if you didn't talk about dying like that," Andy said, "and Brad stop calling your brother a weirdo."

**Clive dropped his hand from his chin. "Pardon?"**

**"What's the last thing you remember," I repeated, "from before you found yourself . . . well, invisible to Mrs. Lambert?"**

**"Oh." Clive reached up to scratch his bald head. "Well, I was sitting at my desk, and I was looking at those letters you brought me. Quite kind of your stepfather to think of us. People so often overlook their community's historical society, when you know, really, without us, the fabric of the local lore would be permanently ****-**** "**

**"Clive," I said. I knew I sounded cranky, but I couldn't help it. "Look, I haven't even had breakfast yet. Can you get a move on, please?"**

"Thank God," Brad muttered quietly in relieve. He couldn't stand another David-like lecture.

**"Oh." He blinked some more. "Yes. Of course. Well, as I was saying, I was examining the letters you brought me. Ever since you left my office the other day, I've been thinking about what you said ... about Hector de Silva, I mean. It does seem a bit unlikely that a fellow who wrote so lovingly of his family would simply walk out on them without a word. And the fact that you found Maria's letters buried in the yard of what was once a well-known boarding-house . . . Well, I must say, upon further consideration, the whole thing struck me as extremely odd. I'd picked up my Dictaphone and was just making a few notes for Mrs. Lambert to type up later when I suddenly felt . . . well, a chill. As if someone had turned the air-conditioning up very high. Although I can assure you Mrs. Lambert knows better than that. Some of our artefacts must be kept in highly controlled atmospheric climates, and she would never ****-****"**

"It wasn't the air-conditioning," David said flatly. He had his suspicions.

**"It wasn't the air-conditioning," I said flatly.**

**He stared at me, clearly startled. "No. No, it wasn't. Because a moment later, I caught the faintest whiff of orange blossoms. And you know Maria Diego was quite well-known for wearing orange blossom-scented toilet water. It was so odd. Because a second later, I could swear that for a moment ..." The look in his eyes, behind the thick lenses of those glasses, grew faraway. "Well, for a moment, I could have sworn I saw her. Just out of the corner of my eye. Maria de Silva Diego ..."**

"DAMN!"

"JAKE!"

"Sorry, but still!"

**The faraway look left his eyes. When his gaze next fastened onto mine, it was laser sharp.**

**"And then I felt," he told me, in a tightly controlled voice, "a shooting pain, all up and down my arm. I knew what it was, of course. Congenital heart disease runs in my family. It killed my grandfather, you know, shortly after his book was first published. But I, unlike him, have been extremely diligent with my diet and exercise regimen. It could only have been the shock, you know, of seeing ****-**** thinking I was seeing anyway ****-**** something that wasn't ****-**** that couldn't possibly ****-**** " He broke off, then continued, "Well, I reached for the telephone to call 911 at once, but it ... well, the telephone sort of ... leaped off my desk."**

"Jesus," Andy muttered.

**I just looked at him. I had to admit, by this time I was feeling sorry for him. I mean, he had been murdered, just like Jesse. And by the same hand, too. Well, more or less.**

**"I couldn't reach it," Clive said sadly. "The telephone, I mean. And that . . . that's the last thing I remember."**

"Poor bloke."

**I licked my lips. "Clive," I said. "What were you saying? Into the Dictaphone. Right before you saw her. Maria de Silva, I mean."**

**"What was I saying? Oh, of course. I was saying that though it would bear further investigation, it did seem to me as if what you suggested, and what my grandfather always believed, might possibly have merit..."**

"Damn," Jake whispered, "just when he could have made it big in the history world and he gets murdered by his own study."

**I shook my head. I couldn't believe it.**

"Neither can I," Jake agreed.

**"She killed you," I murmured.**

**"Oh." Clive was no longer blinking or tugging on his bow tie. He just sat there, looking like a scarecrow somebody had pulled the pole out from under. "Yes. I suppose you could say that. But only in a manner of speaking. I mean, it was the shock, after all. But it's not as if she ****-****"**

"No it was definitely on purpose," David grumbled.

**"To keep you from telling anyone what I said." In spite of my headache, I was getting mad all over again. "And she probably killed your grandfather, too, the same way."**

"God, what a foul woman," Andy muttered.

**Clive did blink then, questioningly. "My . . . my grandfather? You think so? Well, I must say ... I mean, his death was rather sudden, but there was no sign of ****-**** " His expression changed. "Oh. Oh, I see. You think my grandfather was killed by the ghost of Maria de Silva Diego to keep him from writing further about his theory concerning her cousin's disappearance?"**

"No duh," Brad said.

**"That's one way of putting it," I said. "She didn't want him going around telling the truth about what happened to Jesse."**

**"Jesse?" Clive echoed. "Who is Jesse?"**

**We were both nearly startled out of our wits by a sudden knock on my door.**

"Sorry," Andy grinned sheepishly.

**"Suze?" my stepfather called. "Can I come in?"**

**Clive, in a flurry of agitation, dematerialized. I said come in, and the door opened, and Andy stood there, looking awkward. He never comes into my room, except occasionally to fix things.**

Andy sighed, he wished that he held a better relationship with his stepdaughter, on here he could open up to him and feel comfortable pending time with him. He adored her and wanted to be a second father to her (for he would never replace her birth father) but instead it seemed that Father Dominic had taken that place and he was just an unwanted intrusion.

**"Uh, Suze?" he said. "Yeah, urn, you have a visitor. Father Dominic is ****-****"**

**Andy didn't finish because Father Dominic appeared just behind him.**

**I can't really explain why I did what I did then. There is no other explanation for it other than the simple fact that, well, in the six months I'd known him, I'd come to really feel something for the old guy.**

Andy tried not to glower at the book but failed.

**In any case, at the sight of him, I jumped up from the window seat, completely involuntarily, and hurled myself at him. Father Dominic looked more than a little surprised at this unbridled display of emotion, as I am normally somewhat reserved.**

Helen took Andy's hand, she knew how much he wanted to be someone Suze turned to.

**"Oh, Father D," I said, into Father Dominic's shirtfront. "I'm so glad to see you."**

Andy tightened his grip on Helen's hand.

**I was, too. Finally ****– ****finally - some normalcy was returning to my world, which seemed to have gone into a complete tailspin in the past twenty-four hours. Father Dominic was back. Father Dominic would take care of everything. He always did. Just standing there with my arms around him and my head against his chest, smelling his priestly smell, which was of Woolite and, more faintly, the cigarette he'd snuck in the car on his way over, I felt like everything was going to be all right.**

"Whoa! Father D smoked?!" Brad yelped.

"Unbelievable!"

"God, he must be worried!" Helen cried out fearfully. She had hoped Father Dominic would be so confident about everything and sort it all out for her daughter and it will be all over just like that.

**"Oh," Father Dominic said. I could feel his voice reverberating inside his chest, along with the small noises his stomach was making as it digested whatever it was he'd scarfed down for breakfast. "Dear."**

"Poor Father Dom," Jake grinned.

**Father Dom patted me awkwardly on the shoulder.**

**Behind us, I heard Dopey say, "What's with her ?"**

Brad shrank away from the pointed looks and glares, he knew he hadn't been supportive and comforting but how could, he? It was Suze! She was never tearful and weak, he liked being the stronger one for once!

**Andy told him to be quiet.**

**"Aw, come on," Dopey said. "She can't still be upset over that stupid skeleton we found. I mean, that kind of thing shouldn't bother the Queen of the Night Peo ****-**** "**

"I'm sorry!" Brad shouted at the glares. "I didn't mean it!"

"You better apologise to Suze," Andy said sternly.

"I will!" Brad cried out.

**Dopey broke off with a cry of pain. I glanced around Father D's shoulder and saw Andy pulling his second-oldest son down the hallway by the rim of his ear.**

"Good," David muttered. He had been disgusted with his brother's attitude.

**"Cut it out, Dad," Dopey was bellowing. "Ow! Dad, cut it out!"**

**A door slammed. Down the hall in Dopey's room, Andy was reading him the riot act.**

**I let go of Father D.**

**"You've been smoking," I said.**

**"Just a little," he admitted. Seeing my expression, he shrugged helplessly. "Well, it was a long drive. And I was certain that by the time I got here, I'd find you all murdered in your beds. **

Helen shuddered and held on tighter to Andy's hand, who grimaced, meanwhile the boys all shivered at the images that conjured though they were all relieved to know David would live at least. Unharmed.

**You really have the most alarming way, Susannah, of getting yourself into scrapes..."**

"You're telling me," Helen muttered.

**"I know." I sighed, and went to sit on the window seat, circling one knee with my arms. I was in sweats, and I hadn't bothered putting on makeup or even washing my hair. What was the point?**

"Girls," the three boys muttered.

**Father D didn't seem to notice my heinous appearance. He went on, as if we were back in his office, discussing student government fund-raising, or something completely innocuous like that, "I've brought some holy water. It's in my car. I'll tell your stepfather that you asked me to bless the house, on account of yesterday's, err, discovery. He might wonder at your suddenly embracing the Church, but you'll just have to start insisting upon saying grace at supper time ****-**** or perhaps even attending Mass from time to time ****-**** to convince him of your sincerity. **

"Did she?" Jake asked. He couldn't recall Suze being religious in any sense.

"She goes to mass on Sundays still though I suspect that is to spend time with Jesse," Andy said thoughtfully. "And of course she claims a need for confession but that is so she can talk to Father Dominic."

"I think Susie has become more religious though," Helen added. "Just not in a traditional sense."

**I've been doing a bit of reading on those two ****-**** Maria de Silva and this Diego person ****-**** and they were quite devout. Murderers, it appears, but also churchgoers. They will, I think, be quite reluctant to enter a home that has been sanctified by a priest." Father Dominic looked down at me with concern. "It's what could happen when you set foot anywhere outside this house that's worrying me. The minute you ****-**** Good heavens, Susannah." **

Any relieve everyone held faded rapidly at that.

**Father Dominic broke off and peered down at me curiously. "What on earth happened to your forehead?"**

**I reached up and touched the bruise beneath my bangs.**

**"Oh," I said, wincing a little. The wound was still tender. "Nothing. Look, Father D ****-**** "**

"Nothing my arse," Brad grumbled, his stupid, Queen of the night people, sister needed to learn the difference between nothing and a concussion.

**"That isn't nothing." Father Dominic took a step forward, then inhaled sharply. "Susannah! Where in heaven's name did you get that nasty bruise?"**

"Diego paid a visit," Jake growled.

**"It's nothing," I said, scraping my bangs down over my eyes. "It's just a little token of Felix Diego's esteem."**

"Esteem," David snorted.

**"That mark is hardly nothing," Father Dominic declared. "Susannah, has it occurred to you that you might have a concussion? We should have that x-rayed immediately ****-**** "**

"Thank God for Father Dominic," Helen mumbled. Truly grateful that there was someone who looked out for her daughter when she and Andy couldn't.

**"Father Dominic ****-**** "**

**"No arguments, Susannah," Father D said. "Put some shoes on. I'm going to go have a word with your stepfather, and then we're going down to the Carmel Hosp ****-**** "**

"Why didn't he?" Andy frowned.

**The phone jangled noisily. I told you. Grand Central Station. I picked it up, mostly to give myself time to think of an excuse why I didn't need to go to the hospital. A trip to the emergency room was going to require a story about how I'd come to obtain this latest injury, and frankly, I was running out of good lies.**

Everyone sighed at that. Suze shouldn't have to lie, she shouldn't have to go to the hospital either.

**"Hello?" I said into the receiver while Father D scowled down at me.**

"Well she _is_ being rude," Andy muttered in agreement.

**"Suze?" That all-too-familiar high-pitched little voice. "It's me again. Jack."**

"God what does the kid want now?" Jake muttered tiredly. He just wanted this book to end now.

**"Jack," I said, tiredly. "Look, I told you before. I'm really not feeling well ****-****"**

**"That's just it," Jack said. "I got to thinking that maybe you hadn't heard. And then I thought I'd call and tell you. Because I know you'll feel better when I tell you."**

"Unless it's Jesse coming back, I doubt it," Andy said sadly.

**"Tell me what, Jack?"**

**"About how I mediated that ghost for you," Jack said.**

"Did he get rid of Maria?" Brad asked hopefully.

**God, my head was pounding. I was so not in the mood for this. "Oh, yeah? What ghost was that, Jack?"**

**"You know," Jack said. "That guy who was bugging you. That Hector guy."**

"Oh no," Helen gasped.

"Shit," Jake swore.

"Poor kid," Andy moaned, "he's been tricked."

**I nearly dropped the phone. I did drop it, actually, but I flung out my hands and caught the receiver before it hit the floor. Then I held it back up to my ear with both hands so I would be sure not to drop it again ****-**** and make certain I was hearing him right. I did all this with Father Dominic watching me.**

**"Jack," I said, feeling like all the wind had been knocked out of me. "What are you talking about?"**

**"That guy," Jack said. His childish lisp had gone indignant. "You know, the one who wouldn't leave you alone. That lady Maria told me- "**

"Fuck," Jake muttered. No one told him off since it summed up their feelings exactly.

**"Maria?" I had forgotten all about my headache, all about Father Dom. I practically yelled into the phone, "Jack, what are you talking about? Maria who?"**

**"That old-fashioned lady ghost," Jack said, sounding taken aback. And why not? I was shouting like a lunatic. **

"Poor kid," Andy mumbled.

**"The nice one whose picture was in that bald guy's office. She told me that this Hector guy ****–**** the one from the other picture, the little picture ****-**** as bugging you, and that if I wanted to give you a nice surprise, I should exer ****-**** I should exor ****-**** I should ****-****"**

"What an idiot," David muttered. It was so obvious that Maria as lying. His respect and sympathy went down a little for Jack because of this. He had broken Suze's heart.

**"Exorcise him?" My knuckles had gone white around the receiver. "Exorcise him, Jack? Is that what you did?"**

**"Yeah," Jack said, sounding pleased with himself. "Yeah, that's what it was. I exorcised him."**

"I want to smack the brat," Jake growled.

"Jake!" Andy scolded. "It's not the kid's fault! He had been tricked by a sneaky and vile woman!"

"Well that's the end of that entry," Helen sighed, "your turn, Jake."


	11. Chapter 11

**I sank down onto the window seat.**

**"What ****-****" My lips felt numb. I don't know if it was a complication of my concussion or what, but all of a sudden I couldn't feel my lips. "What did you say, Jack?"**

**"I exorcised him for you." Jack sounded immensely pleased with himself. "All by myself, too. Well, that lady helped a little. Did it work? Is he gone?"**

Helen bit back the urge to scream at the brat for being so ignorant.

**Across my room, Father Dominic was looking at me questioningly. Small wonder. My conversation, from his end, had to sound completely bizarre. I hadn't, after all, had a chance to tell him about Jack.**

"Which in hindsight was probably not the best idea," David said sadly.

**"Suze?" Jack said. "Are you still there?"**

**"When?" I murmured through my numb lips.**

**Jack went, "What?"**

**"When, Jack," I said. "When did you do this?"**

**"Oh. Last night. While you were out with my brother. See, that Maria lady, she came over, and she brought that picture, and some candles, and then she told me what to say, and so I said it, and it was really cool, because this red smoke started coming out of the candles, and then it swirled and swirled, and then over our heads this big hole opened up in the air, and I looked up inside it, and it was really dark, and then I said some more words, and then that guy appeared, and he got sucked up right inside."**

Everyone shuddered at that. Poor Jesse had completely intended to keep his word and no he was gone and in such a nightmarish way...they all still remembered Heather.

**I didn't say anything. What could I say? The kid had just described an exorcism - at least, all the ones I'd ever experienced. He wasn't making it up. He had exorcised Jesse. He had exorcised Jesse. Jesse had been exorcised.**

"Oh Susie," Helen said tearfully.

**"Suze," Jack said. "Suze, are you still there?"**

**"I'm still here," I said. I guess I must have looked pretty awful, since Father Dom came and sat down on the window seat next to me, looking all worried.**

"Poor Father Dom must be clueless right now," Brad tried to grin but grimaced instead.

**And why not? I was in shock.**

"Don't blame her," Andy muttered, "I am as well."

**And this was a different kind of shock than I'd ever felt before. This wasn't like being thrown off a roof or having a knife held to my throat. This was worse.**

"_How_?!" the three disbelieving boys shouted.

"Because she is heartbroken," Helen explained sadly.

**Because I couldn't believe it. I simply couldn't believe it. Jesse had kept his promise. He hadn't disappeared because his remains had, at long last, been found, proving he'd been murdered. He'd disappeared because Maria de Silva had had him exorcised...**

"Bitch," Helen muttered ignoring the scandalised looks of her stepsons.

**"You're not mad at me, are you?" **

"Yes," Jake muttered.

**Jack asked worriedly. "I mean, I did the right thing, right? That Maria lady said Hector was really mean to you and you would be really thankful-" **

"Does she sound thankful to you?" Brad rolled his eyes. "Naive idiot."

**There was a noise in the background, and then Jack said, "That's Caitlin. She wants to know when you're coming back. She wants to know if you can maybe come in this afternoon, because she has to ****-****"**

"Why?" Andy narrowed his eyes. "What is so important that she has to drag in a sick employee back into work?"

Jake fidgeted, "if it's any consolation I break up with her not long after this," he offered.

**But I never did learn what Caitlin had to do. That's because I had hung up. I just couldn't listen to that sweet little voice telling me these horrible, awful things for one second more.**

"Oh Susie," Helen blinked back even more tears; she was going to run out of hankies at this rate.

**The thing was it wouldn't sink in. It just wouldn't. I understood intellectually what Jack had just said, but emotionally, it wasn't registering.**

"I don't blame her," David murmured, "I was the same when she told me about Mom."

**Jesse had not moved on from this plane to the next ****-**** not of his own free will. He had been ripped from his existence here the same way he'd been ripped from life, and, ultimately, by the very same hands.**

Helen cried into her hands and Andy held her while Jake hurriedly continued to read. They were all struggling to remember that Jesse is alive and dating Suze now.

**And why?**

**For the same reason he'd been killed: to keep him from embarrassing Maria de Silva.**

The swear words muttered could never be repeated again. Even Andy swore like a sailor.

**"Susannah." Father Dominic's voice was gentle. "Who is Jack?"**

**I glanced up, startled. I had practically forgotten Father D was in the room. But he wasn't just in the room. He was sitting right beside me, his blue eyes filled with bewildered concern.**

**"Susannah," he said. Father Dom never calls me Suze, like everyone else does. I asked him why once, and he told me it was because he thought Suze sounded vulgar. Vulgar! That really cracked me up at the time. He's so funny, so old-fashioned.**

"How on earth is Suze vulgar?!" Helen demanded. "It's a damn sight better than Susan. I'm having words with that man!"

Andy had to try and hide a grin at that. Finally someone who didn't think the sun shined out of Father Dominic...okay, okay he a being far too bitter there.

**Jesse never called me Suze, either.**

"Oh Susie!"

**"Jack's a mediator," I said. "He's eight years old. I've been baby-sitting for him up at the resort."**

**Father Dominic looked surprised. "A mediator? Really? How extraordinary." Then his look of surprise turned back to one of concern. "You ought to have called me straight away, Susannah, the moment you realized it. **

"I disagree," Helen crossed her arm, "she should have called the moment Maria first threatened her!"

**There aren't many mediators in the world. I would like very much to speak to him. Show him the ropes, as it were. You know, there's such a lot to learn for a young mediator. It mightn't be wise for you to undertake educating one, Susannah, given your own comparative youth..."**

"And her violent nature, I bet," Brad grinned.

Unfortunately for Suze everyone felt compelled to agree with Brad on this one.

**"Yeah," I said, with a bitter laugh. To my bemusement, the sound caught in my throat on a sort of sob. "You can say that again."**

**I couldn't believe it. I was crying again.**

"Oh Susie!"

**What was this, anyway? I mean this crying thing? I go for months dry as a bone, and then all of a sudden, I'm weeping at the drop of a hat.**

"It is understandable sweetie," Andy murmured softly, "you're grieving..."

**"Susannah." Father Dominic reached out and grabbed my arm. He gave me a little shake. I could tell by his expression he was really astonished. Like I said, I never cry. "Susannah, what is it? Are you crying, Susannah?"**

"No, she's laughing," Brad rolled his eyes.

**I could only nod.**

**"But why, Susannah?" Father Dom asked urgently. "Why? Jesse? It's a hard thing, and I know you'll miss him, but ****-****"**

"Oh come on! How thick can you get? Even I can tell Suze is in love with the bloke!"

"You do realise that you just insulted yourself, right?"

"Shuddup David!"

**"You don't understand," I blurted. I was having trouble seeing. Everything had gotten very fuzzy. I couldn't see my bed or even the patterns on the pillows on the window seat, and they were much closer. I raised my hands to my face, thinking maybe Father Dom had been right, and that I should get that X-ray after all. Something was evidently wrong with my vision.**

"Yes get an x-ray," Helen encouraged her daughter in the book.

**But when my fingers encountered wetness on my cheeks, I was forced to admit the truth. There wasn't anything wrong with my vision. My eyes were simply overflowing with tears.**

**"Oh, Father," I said, and for the second time in half an hour, I threw my arms around a priest's neck. My forehead collided with his glasses, and they went all crooked. To say that Father Dominic was startled by this gesture would be an understatement of the grossest kind.**

"The hugging is gross," Brad muttered.

"You'rea twelve year old," David mumbled in reply.

**But judging by the way he froze up when I uttered them, he was even more surprised by the words that came out of my mouth.**

**"He exorcised Jesse; Father D. Maria de Silva tricked him into doing it. She told Jack that Jesse had been b-bothering me, and that he'd b-be doing me a favour, getting rid of him. Oh, Father Dominic ****-****" My voice rose to a wail. "What am I going to do?"**

**Poor Father Dominic. I highly doubt he has hysterically weeping women throwing their arms around him all that often. **

"I don't think any of the nuns are the weeping time," Jake said.

The Ackerman men all shuddered at the mental image of Sister Ernestine throwing herself at Father Dominic weeping. It wasn't a pretty picture.

**You can totally tell. He didn't know how to react at all. I mean, he patted me on the shoulder and said, "Shh, everything will be all right," and stuff, but you could tell he was really uncomfortable. I guess he was afraid Andy was going to walk by and think I was crying because of something Father Dominic had said.**

"I wouldn't have thought that," Andy protested, "I would have blamed Brad."

"Dad!"

"Sorry, son but you weren't making the situation easy on her."

"I'm not that _much_ of a git!"

**Which was ridiculous, of course. As if anything anybody said could make me cry.**

"I think if I told her Jesse died she would cry," Brad said.

"Actually I think you would end up punched," Jake replied, "and we would all support Suze on that one," Andy and Helen nodded their agreement to that while Brad flushed red. It took him a while to realise that his joke was in poor taste.

**After a few minutes of Father Dom saying, "Shh, everything will be all right," and being all stiff, I couldn't help laughing.**

"Eh?" Brad muttered.

"She's hysterical," David explained sadly finding himself incapable of giving a detailed description of hysteria and the female mind.

**Seriously. I mean, it was funny. In a sad, pathetic kind of way.**

"Oh honey," Andy murmured. He just wanted to hug her now.

**"Father Dominic," I said, pulling away and looking up at him through my streaming eyes. "Are you joking? Everything is not going to be all right. Okay? Nothing is ever going to be all right ever again."**

**Father Dominic might not have been a very good hugger, but he was all there in the hanky department. He fished his out and started dabbing my face with it. I'd seen him do this before with the little kids at school, the kindergartners who were crying over dropped ice cream cones or whatever. He really had the whole dabbing thing down.**

"Yet show him a hysterical woman and he can't handle it," Helen muttered.

**"Now, Susannah," he said as he dabbed. "That isn't true. You know that isn't true."**

**"Father," I said. "I know it is true. Jesse is gone, and it is totally my fault."**

"How?"

"Oh sweetie it isn't your fault," Andy muttered.

**"How is it your fault?" Father Dominic looked down at me disapprovingly. "Susannah, it isn't your fault at all."**

"Exactly!" Brad cried out. He didn't understand the illogical conclusion of his stepsister's.

**"Yes, it is. You said so yourself. I should have called you the minute I realized the truth about Jack. But I didn't. I thought I could handle him myself. I thought it was no big deal. And now look what happened. Jesse's gone. Forever."**

"And it isn't yours or the kid's fault," Andy said firmly, "It's that foul excuse of a woman's fault."

**"It is a tragedy," Father Dominic said. "I cannot think of a greater injustice. Jesse was a very good friend to you ... to both of us. But the fact is, Susannah" ****-**** He'd managed to clean up almost all my tears, and now he put his handkerchief away ****-**** "he spent a good many years wandering in a sort of half-life. Now his struggles are over, and he can perhaps begin to enjoy his just rewards."**

"As Suze's boyfriend, the poor sod," Brad said mournfully.

"Bradley, I am warning you," Andy growled.

**I narrowed my eyes at him. What was he talking about?**

**He must have read the scepticism in my face, since he said, "Well, think about it, Susannah. For one hundred and fifty years, Jesse was trapped in a sort of netherworld between his past life and his next. Though you can lament the manner in which it happened, he has, at last, made the leap to his final destination ****-**** "**

**I jerked away from Father D. In fact, I jerked away from the window seat. I stood up, strode away a few paces, and then whirled around, astounded by what I'd just heard.**

**"What are you talking about?" I demanded. "Jesse was here for a reason. I don't know what it was, and I'm not sure he did, either. But whatever it was, he was supposed to stay here, in this 'netherworld,' until he'd worked it out. Now he'll never be able to. Now he'll never know why he was here for all that time."**

**"I understand that, Susannah," Father Dominic said in a voice I found infuriatingly calm. "And as I said before, it is unfortunate ****-**** a tragedy. But regardless, Jesse has moved on, and we should at least be glad he's found eternal peace ****-****"**

"Definitely need a word with the good Father," Andy muttered.

**"Oh my God!" I was shouting again, but I didn't care. I was enraged. "Eternal peace? How do you know that's what he's found? You can't know that."**

"This isn't goingwell," David rubbed his temples feeling a headache coming on.

**"No," Father Dominic said. I could tell he was choosing his words with care now. Like I was a bomb that might go off if he used the wrong one.**

**"You're right," Father D said quietly. "I can't know that. But that is the difference between you and me, Susannah. You see, I have faith."**

"Faith," Helen snorted – like that was a comfort to her daughter.

**I was across the room in three quick strides. I don't know what I was going to do. I certainly wasn't going to hit him. I mean, the trigger to my anger mechanism might be oversensitive, but I'm not about to go around punching priests. **

"Thank God," Helen muttered. That would have been a nightmare and a half.

**Well, at least not Father Dom. He is my homeboy, as we used to say back in Brooklyn.**

Everyone snorted at that. Homeboy? _Really_?

**Still, I think I was going to shake him. I was going to put my hands on his shoulders and attempt to shake some sense in him, since reasoning did not appear to be working. I mean, seriously, faith. Faith! As if faith ever worked better than a good ass-kicking.**

"Violence is never the answer," Andy shook his head.

**But before I could lay a hand on him, I heard someone behind me clear his throat. I looked around, and there was Andy, in his tool belt and jeans and a T-shirt that said Welcome to Duck Bill Flats, standing in my open doorway and looking concerned.**

"I heardshouting and it worried me," Andy explained.

**"Suze," he said. "Father Dominic. Is everything all right in here? I thought I heard some shouting."**

**Father Dominic stood up.**

**"Yes," he said, looking grave. "Well, Susannah is - and very rightly, too - concerned about the, err, unfortunate discovery in your backyard yesterday. She has asked me, Andrew, to perform a house blessing, and I of course said I would. I've left my Bible in the car, however ..."**

**Andy perked right up. "You want me to go get it for you, Father?" he asked.**

Andy groaned at how eager and pathetic he sounded there.

**"Oh, that would be wonderful, Andrew," Father D said. "Just wonderful. It should be on the front seat. If you could bring that to me, I'll get to work straight away."**

**"No problem, Father," Andy said, and he went away, looking all happy. Which is easy to be if you, like Andy, haven't the slightest clue what's going on in your own house. I mean, Andy doesn't believe. He doesn't know there's a plane of existence other than this one. He doesn't know people from that other plane are trying to kill me.**

"Hey I believed in other planes of existence! I'm catholic!" Andy protested. "Though I'll give her the killing spirits, I wouldn't have believed that."

**Or that I was once in love with the guy whose bones he dug up yesterday.**

Everyone grimaced, when it was put like that it sounded revolting and incredibly disturbing.

**"Father D," I said, the minute I heard Andy's feet hit the stairs.**

**"Susannah," he said tiredly. He was trying to head me off at the pass, I could tell. "I understand how difficult this is for you. Jesse was very special. I know he meant a great deal to you -"**

"Somehow I can't see Father Dom knowing exactly _how _special Jesse was to Suze," Jake said.

**I couldn't believe this. "Father D -"**

"**-but the fact is, Susannah, Jesse is in a better place now." Father Dominic, as he spoke, walked across my room, stooped down by the door, and pulled out a black bag he'd apparently set down in the hallway. He lifted the bag, set it down again on my unmade bed, and opened it. Then he started taking things out of it.**

**"You and I," he went on, "are just going to have to have faith in that thought, and move on."**

**I put my hands on my hips. I don't know if it was the concussion or the fact that my boyfriend had been exorcised, but my bitch quotient was set on high, I think.**

**"I have faith, Father Dom," I informed him. "I have plenty of faith. I have faith in myself, and I have faith in you. That's how I know that we can fix this."**

"Good," Helen sighed in relieve. It was wonderful that her daughter was no longer moping and pulling herself back together.

**Father Dominic's baby blues widened behind the lenses of his bifocals as he lifted a purple ribbony thing to his lips, kissed it, then slipped it around his neck. "Fix this? Fix what? Whatever do you mean, Susannah?"**

**"You know what I mean," I said, because he did.**

**"I -" Father Dominic took a metal thing that looked like an ice cream scooper out of his bag, along with a jar of what I could only suppose was holy water. "I realize, of course," he said, "that Maria de Silva Diego will have to be dealt with. That is troubling, but I think you and I are both perfectly well equipped to handle the situation. And the boy, Jack, will have to be seen to and adequately indoctrinated in the appropriate methods of mediation, of which exorcism, as you know, should only be used as a last resort. But-"**

Everyone rolled their eyes; Father Dominic needed to get over this whole exorcism thing.

**"That's not it," I said.**

**Father Dominic looked up from his house blessing preparation. "It isn't?" he echoed questioningly.**

**"No," I repeated. "And don't pretend like you don't know what I'm talking about."**

"I'm pretty sure the good Father has no idea what you're talking about."

**He blinked a few times, reminding me of Clive Clemmings.**

**"I can't say that I do know, Susannah," he said. "What are you talking about?"**

**"Getting him back," I said.**

Everyone leaned in interested. This was how Jesse was brought back to life. They were going to find out the truth.

**"Getting who back, Susannah?" Father Dom's all-night driving marathon was starting to show. He looked tired. He was a handsome guy, for someone in his sixties. I was pretty sure half the nuns and most of the female portion of the Mission's congregation were in love with him. **

"Ew!" All the boys yelled.

**Not that Father D would ever notice. The knowledge that he was a middle-aged hottie would only embarrass Father D.**

"And is something we could have all lived without ever knowing," Brad muttered.

**"You know who," I said.**

**"Jesse? Getting Jesse back?" Father Dominic stood there, the stole around his neck and the dipper thing in one hand. He looked bewildered. "Susannah, you know as well as I do that once spirits find their way out of this world, we lose all contact with them. They're gone. They've moved on."**

"And come back alive, defying all logic," David added.

**"I know. I didn't say it was going to be easy. In fact, I can think of only one way to do it, and even then, well, it'll be risky. But with your help, Father D, it just might work."**

**"My help?" Father Dominic looked confused. "My help with what?"**

**"Father D," I said. "I want you to exorcise me."**

"_WHAT?!"_ Helen yelped. "That's it she's grounded!"

"That's the end of the entry," Jake passed the diary to Brad, "your turn now."


	12. Chapter 12

_Author's note: Thank you everyone for such lovely revie_ws. _I apologize for the lack of responses my keyboard is slightly broken (thank God for spell check and copy and paste or I will never get this chapter done) which is also partly why this chapter took so long to rite. I have also been incredibly busy with real life – I graduated last week and then been in interview and busy with friends and family. So thank you for your patience. Please enjoy this chapter. _

**"For the last time, Susannah," Father Dominic said. This time he pounded on the steering wheel for emphasis as he said it. "What you are asking is impossible."**

"Wanna bet, she'll find a way?" Jake muttered to his brothers.

"I'm not going to lose another five bucks," Brad scowled.

**I rolled my eyes. "Hello? What happened to faith? I thought if you had faith, anything was possible."**

"I think there is a limit that even faith could provide," David murmured, "though when I think about it, Suze has a soul, she could be exorcised..."

"But she won't be," Helen declared, "not if she wants to leave the house ever again."

**Father D didn't like having his own words tossed back at him. I could tell by the way he was grimacing at the reflection of the cars behind us in his rear-view mirror.**

"People rarely do like having their own words thrown back at them," David agreed.

**"Then let me say that what you are suggesting has a very unlikely chance of succeeding." Driving in Carmel-by-the-Sea is no joke, since the houses have no numbers, and the tourists can't, for the life of them, figure out where they're going. And the traffic is, of course, ninety-eight percent tourists. Father D was frustrated enough by our efforts to get where we were going. My announcement back in my bedroom that I wanted him to exorcise me wasn't helping his mood much, either.**

"Poor Father Dom," Jake said sympathetically.

**"Not to mention the fact that it is unethical, immoral, and probably quite dangerous," **

"Forget the unethical and immoral bit!" Andy snapped. "It's the dangerous bit that worries me!"

**He concluded, as he waved at a minivan to go ahead and go around us.**

**"Right," I said. "But it's not impossible."**

Helen face palmed wondering if her daughter had any understanding of giving in.

**"You seem to be forgetting something," Father D said. "You are not a ghost, nor are you possessed by one."**

"Debatable," Brad muttered, "he obviously never seen Suze first thing in the morning."

All the Ackerman men shuddered at that.

**"I know. But I have a spirit, right? I mean a soul. So why can't you exorcise it? Then I can go, you know, have a look around, see if I can find him, and if I do, bring him back." I added as an afterthought, "If he wants to come, of course."**

"He'll want to," Helen said firmly.

**"Susannah." Father Dom was really fed up with me, you could totally tell. **

"Suze must be the first person in the world to test Father Dom's patience," Jake shook his head.

**It had been all right, back at the house, when I'd been crying and everything. But then I'd gotten this terrific idea.**

"There's nothing terrific about her idea," Andy growled.

**Only Father Dominic didn't think the idea was so terrific, see. I personally found it brilliant. I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it before. I guess my brain had gotten a little squashed, what with the concussion.**

"Which you should have checked out as soon as possible!" Helen snarled.

**But there was no reason why my plan shouldn't work. No reason at all.**

"I can think at least one reason it won't work," Andy muttered.

**Except that Father Dominic would have no part of it.**

"Good," everyone said firmly.

**"No," he said. Which was what he'd been saying ever since I first mentioned it. "What you are suggesting, Susannah has never been done before. There isn't the slightest guarantee it will work. Or that, if it does, you will be able to return to your body."**

Helen whimpered while all the males shuddered.

**"That," I said calmly, "is where the rope comes in."**

"NO!"

**"No!" Father Dominic shouted.**

**He had to slam on the brakes at that very moment because a tour bus came barrelling along from out of nowhere, and, there being no traffic lights in downtown Carmel, there were often differences of opinion over whose turn it was at four-way stops. I heard the holy water, still in its jar in his black bag on the backseat, slosh around.**

**You wouldn't have thought there'd be any left, what with the dousing Father D had given our house. That stuff had been seriously flying. I hoped he was right about Maria and Felix being too Catholic to dare to cross the threshold of a newly blessed home. Because if he was wrong, I'd pretty much made a big ass out of myself in front of Dopey for no reason. **

Brad sniggered at little at that.

**Dopey had been all, "Whatcha doing that for, Father D?" when Father Dominic got to his room with the aspergillum, which turned out to be what the dippy thing was called.**

David silently despaired.

**"Because your sister asked me to," Father Dom replied as he flicked holy water all over Dopey's weight bench ****- ****probably the only time that thing had ever come close to being cleaned.**

"Not even the holy water got out that demonic smell," Andy said mournfully, "I think we'll never be rid off it."

**"Suze asked you to bless my room?" I could hear Dopey's voice all the way down the hall, in my own room. I'm sure neither of them knew I was listening.**

"No, but it doesn't surprise me," Brad grumbled. After all he eavesdropped on Suze before with Jesse.

**"She asked me to bless the house," Father Dominic said. "She was very disturbed by the discovery of the skeleton in your backyard, as I'm sure you know. I would greatly appreciate it if you would show her a little extra kindness for the next few days, Bradley."**

"Did you?" Andy inquired.

"Err..."

"I thought as much."

"Hey! She was asleep for two days straight!"

**Bradley! In my room, I started cracking up. Bradley! Who knew?**

Brad scowled as his brothers laughed at him. It wasn't that funny.

**I don't know what Dopey said in reply to Father Dom's suggestion that he be nicer to me, because I took the opportunity to shower and change into civilized clothing. I figured twelve hours was more than enough to go around in sweats. Any more than that and you are, quite frankly, wallowing in your own sorrow. Jesse would not want my grieving over him to affect my by-now-famous sense of fashion.**

"I doubt he'd care," Jake, Brad, and David all mumbled.

**Besides, I had a plan.**

**So it was that, showered, made up, and attired in what I considered to be the height of mediator chic in the form of a slip dress and sandals, I felt prepared to take on not only the minions of Satan but the staff at the Carmel Pine Cone , in front of whose office Father D had promised to drop me. I had not only figured out, you see, a way to get Jesse back: I'd figured out a way to avenge Clive Clemmings's death, not to mention his grandfather's.**

**Oh, yes. I still had it. But good.**

**"It is out of the question, Susannah," Father Dominic said. "So put the idea from your head. Wherever he is now, Jesse is in a better place than he was. Let him rest there."**

**"Fine," I said. We pulled up in front of a low building, heavily shaded by pine trees. The offices of the local rag.**

**"Fine," Father Dominic said, putting his car into park. "I'll wait out here for you. It would probably be better if I didn't come in, I suppose."**

"It would certainly cause questions," Andy agreed.

**"Probably," I said. "And there's no need to wait. I'll find my own way home." I undid my seat belt.**

Helen narrowed her eyes, she didn't trust Suze to keep her word – not when it involved Jesse.

**"Susannah," Father Dominic said.**

**I lifted my sunglasses and peered at him. "Yes?"**

**"I'll wait here for you," he said. "We still have a good deal of work to do, you and I."**

**I screwed up my face. "We do?"**

**"Maria and Diego," Father D reminded me gently. "You are protected from them at home now, but they are still at large, and will, I think be excessively angry when they realize you are not dead ****-****" I had finally broken down and explained to him what had happened to my head. "We need to make preparations, you and I, to deal with them."**

"Thank God, for Father D," Jake muttered. He was pretty sure they would have ended up dead if Father Dominic hadn't come when he did.

**"Oh," I said. "That."**

**I had, of course, forgotten all about it. Not because I did not feel Maria and her husband needed to be dealt with, but because I knew my idea of dealing with them and Father D's idea were not exactly going to gel. I mean, priests aren't really big on beating adversaries into bloody pulps. They're more into gentle reasoning.**

The boys snorted at that.

**"Sure," I said. "Yeah. We should get right on that."**

**"And of course ****-****" Father D looked really odd. I realized why when the next words that came out of his mouth were, "We've got to decide what's to be done with Jesse's remains."**

"Oh," Helen felt like crying on her daughter's behalf.

"I wondered who paid for the body to be buried," Andy murmured softly.

**Jesse's remains. The words hit me like twin punches. Jesse's remains. Oh God.**

**"I was thinking," Father Dominic said, still choosing his words with elaborate care, "of putting in a formal request with the coroner's office to have the remains transferred to the church for burial in the Mission cemetery. Do you agree with me that that would be appropriate?"**

**Something hard grew in my throat. I had to swallow it down.**

"Oh, Susie," Helen murmured.

**"Yes," I said. It came out sounding funny, though. "What about a headstone?"**

"Oh Susie!"

**Father Dominic said, "Well, that might be difficult, seeing as how I highly doubt the coroner will be able to make a positive identification."**

**Right. They didn't have dental X-rays back when Jesse'd been alive.**

David merely just shook his head.

**"Maybe," Father Dominic said, "a simple cross . . ."**

**"No," I said. "A headstone. I have three thousand dollars." More if I took back all those Jimmy Choos. Good thing I'd saved the receipts. Who needed a fall wardrobe, anyway? "Do you think that would cover it?"**

"So that's what happened to her savings," Andy sighed. She shouldn't have to know or need to do this at all. It wasn't fair at all on her.

**"Oh," Father Dominic said, looking taken aback. "Susannah, I ****-****"**

**"You can let me know," I said. Suddenly, I didn't think I could sit there on the street anymore, discussing this with him. I opened the passenger door. "I better go. See you in a few."**

**And I started to get out of the car.**

**But not soon enough. Father D called my name again.**

**"Father D," I began impatiently, but he held up a hand.**

**"Just hear me out, Susannah," he said. "It isn't that I don't wish there was something we could do to bring Jesse back. I, too, wish that he could, as you said, have found his own way to wherever it was he was supposed to have gone after death. I do. I truly do. I just don't think that going to the extreme you're suggesting is ... well, necessary. And I certainly don't think it's what he would have wanted, your risking your life for his sake."**

"No, he wouldn't," Helen agreed.

**I thought about that. I really did. Father D was absolutely right, of course. Jesse would not have wanted me to risk my life for him, not ever. Especially considering the fact that he doesn't even have one anymore. A life, I mean.**

"Exactly! So drop the crazy idea!"

**But let's face it, Jesse's from a slightly different era. Back when he was born, girls spent all their time at quilting bees. They didn't exactly go around routinely kicking butt the way we do now.**

"And? It doesn't give you permission to get rid of your soul!"

**And even though Jesse's seen me kick butt a million times, it still makes him nervous, you can totally tell. You would think he'd be used to it by now, but no. I mean, he was even surprised when he heard about Maria and her knife. I guess that's kind of understandable. Come on, little Miss Hoop Skirt, poppin' a blade?**

"I find it believable," David muttered, "after all many women were expected to be able to protect themselves to some extent in many different cultures and time periods for example-"

"Not now, David," Andy interrupted his son kindly.

**Still, even after a century and a half of knowing she was the one who had ordered the hit on him, that completely blew his mind. I mean, that sexism thing, they drive that stuff down deep. It hasn't been easy, curing him of it.**

"I can't see Jesse being that sexist," Jake muttered rolling his eyes.

**Anyway, all I'm saying is, Father D's right: Jesse definitely would not want me to risk my life for him.**

**But we don't always get what we want, do we?**

"No or my daughter would have a nice long and safe life," Helen grumbled.

**"Fine," I said again. You would have thought that Father D would notice how accommodating I'd become all of a sudden. I mean, didn't he realize that he wasn't the only person in town who could help me? I had an ace up my sleeve, and he didn't even know it.**

"Oh she better not use that little boy or I swear to God, I will ground her in the afterlife as well!"

"I just can't believe Father Dominic fell for it," Andy muttered.

**"Be back in a flash," I said with a full-on, hundred-watt smile.**

**Then I turned and went into the offices of the Carmel Pine Cone like I was just going in there to place a personal ad or something.**

**What I was doing, of course, was something way more insidious.**

David rolled his eyes, "It wasn't insidious at all."

**"Is Cee Cee Wells here?" I asked the pimply kid at the reception desk.**

**He looked up, startled. I don't know what freaked him out more, my slip dress or the fact that I'd asked to see Cee Cee.**

"Probably the slip dress," Jake muttered.

"Naw," Brad mumbled back, "it'll be both."

**"Over there," he said, pointing. His voice wobbled all over the place.**

"Poor bloke," Andy grinned. "Doesn't know where to look."

**"Thanks," I said, and started down a long and quite messy corridor, passing a lot of industrious journalists who were eagerly tapping out their stories on the recent spate of wind chime thefts off people's front porches, and the more alarming problem of parking in front of the post office.**

"We have more news, than that," Andy rolled his eyes.

**Cee Cee was in a cubicle in the back. It appeared to be the photocopier cubicle, because that was what she was doing: photocopying.**

**"Oh my God," she said, when she saw me. "What are you doing here?"**

**She didn't say it in an unhappy way, though.**

"She probably missed Suze," Helen said with a smile.

**"Slumming," I said, and settled myself into an office chair beside the fax machine.**

**"I can see that," Cee Cee said. She was taking her role as girl reporter very seriously. Her long, stick-straight white hair was coiled up on top of her hair with a Number 2 pencil, and there was a smudge of toner on one pink cheek. "Why aren't you at the resort?"**

**"Mental health day," I said. "On account of the dead body they found in our backyard yesterday."**

"Yes, just say it like that," Helen rolled her eyes. "That won't scare people or make them jump."

**Cee Cee dropped a ream of paper.**

**"Oh my God!" she gushed. "That was you? I mean, there's a mention of a coroner's call up to the hills in the Police Beat section, but somebody said it must have been a Native American burial site or something..."**

"I can assure you what I dug up wasn't a Native American burial site," Andy snorted.

**"Oh, no," I said. "Not unless the Native Americans around here wore spurs."**

**"Spurs?" Cee Cee reached for a notepad that was resting on top of the copier, then pulled the pencil from the knot on top of her head, causing her long hair to fall down around her shoulders. Because she is an albino, Cee Cee keeps the vast majority of her skin protected from the sun at all times, even when she's working inside an office. Today was no exception. In spite of the heat outside, she was wearing jeans and a brown button-up sweater.**

Helen grimaced, to wear that in this heat was unbearable, her heart went out to her daughter's friend.

**On the other hand, the air-conditioning in the place had to be on high. It was like an icebox in there.**

Okay, that made it better.

**"Spill," Cee Cee said, perching on the edge of the table that supported the fax machine.**

**I did. I spilled it all. Everything, from the letters Dopey had found to my trip to Clive's office to his untimely death the day before. I mentioned Clive's grandfather's book and Jesse and the historically significant role my house had played in his murder. I told her about Maria and Diego and their no-account kids, the fact that Jesse's portrait was now missing from the historical society, and my suspicions that the skeleton found in my backyard belonged to him.**

**When I was through, Cee Cee raised her gaze from the notepad and went, "Geez, Simon. This could be a movie of the week."**

"We're not selling the story!" Andy barked knowing the looks his eldest two sons were exchanging.

"Oh, c'mon Dad!"

"It isn't fair to Jesse."

**"Lifetime channel," I agreed.**

**Cee Cee pointed at me with the pencil. "Tiffani-Amber Thiessen could play Maria!"**

**"So," I said. "Are you going to print it?"**

**"Heck, yeah," Cee Cee said. "I mean, it's got everything. Romance and murder and intrigue and local interest. Too bad almost everybody involved has been dead a hundred years, or more. Still, if I can get confirmation from the coroner that your skeleton belonged to a male in his twenties . . . Any idea how they did it? Killed him, I mean?"**

**I thought about Dopey and his shovel. "Well," I said, "if they shot him ****-**** you know, in the head ****-**** I doubt the coroner will be able to tell, thanks to Brad's ham-fisted digging technique."**

Brad turned an interesting shade of red. He won't be able to look at Jesse in the eye again for a very long time.

**Cee Cee looked at me. "You want to borrow my sweater?"**

**Surprised, I shook my head. "Why?"**

**"You're shivering."**

"Oh, Susie!"

**I was, but not because I was cold.**

**"I'm okay," I said. "Look, Cee Cee, it's really important you get them to run this story. And they have to do it soon. Like tomorrow."**

**She said, not looking up again from her notepad, "Oh, I know. And I think it'd go great alongside Dr. Clemmings's obituary, you know? The project he was working on when he died. That kind of thing."**

**"So," I said, "it'll run tomorrow? Do you think it'll run tomorrow?"**

**Cee Cee shrugged. "They won't want to run it until they get the coroner's report on the body. And that could take weeks."**

**Weeks? I didn't have weeks. And though Cee Cee didn't know it, she didn't have weeks either.**

"Oh no!"

"She'll be fine," Andy said soothingly, "Suze will protect her."

**I was shaking uncontrollably now. Because I had realized, of course, what I'd just done: put Cee Cee in the same kind of jeopardy I'd put Clive Clemmings in. Clive had been just fine until Maria had overheard him telling his Dictaphone what I'd said about Jesse. Then faster than you could say The Haunting, he was suffering from a massive, paranormally induced coronary. Had I just sentenced Cee Cee to the same gruesome end? While I highly doubted Maria was going to ransack the offices of the Carmel Pine Cone the way she had the Carmel historical society, there was still a chance she might find out what I had done.**

**I needed that story to run right away. The sooner people found out the truth about Maria and Felix Diego, the better my chances of them not killing me ****-**** or the people I cared about.**

**"It's got to run tomorrow," I said. "Please, Cee Cee. Can't you call the coroner and get some kind of unofficial statement?"**

**Cee Cee did look up from her notebook then. She looked up and said, "Suze. What is the rush? These people have been dead for like forever. What does it matter?"**

"Because their ghosts can come back and kill you," Brad muttered. He didn't like Cee Cee – he thought she was evil incarnated alongside with Suze – but he didn't want her to die either.

**"It matters," I said. My teeth were starting to chatter. "It just really matters, okay, Cee Cee? Please, please see what you can do to put a rush on it. And promise you won't talk about it. The story, I mean. Outside these offices. It's really important that you keep it to yourself."**

**Cee Cee reached out and laid a hand on my bare shoulder. Her fingers were very warm and soft. "Suze," she said, peering down at me sort of intently. "What did you do to your head? Where'd that giant bruise under your bangs come from?"**

**I pushed self-consciously at my hair.**

**"Oh," I said. "I tripped. I fell into a hole. The hole they found the body in, isn't that funny?"**

"No," Andy, Helen, Jake and David said.

"Yes – if she had actually fallen," Brad cackled.

**Cee Cee didn't seem to think it was funny at all. She went, "Have you had a doctor look at that? Because it looks pretty bad. You might have a concussion, or something."**

"Listen to your best friend!" Helen shouted at the book.

**"I'm fine," I said, standing up. "Really. It's nothing. Look, I better go. Remember what I said, will you? About the story, I mean. It's really important that you don't mention it to anyone. And that you get them to run it as soon as possible. I need a lot of people to see it. A lot of people. They need to see the truth. You know. About the Diegos."**

**Cee Cee stared at me. "Suze," she said. "Are you sure you're all right? I mean, since when do you care about the local gentry?"**

"Since they started killing people she cares about," Jake muttered.

**I stammered, as I backed out of the cubicle, "Well, since meeting Dr. Clemmings, I guess. I mean, it's a real tragedy that people so often overlook their community's historical society, when you know, really, without it, the fabric of the- "**

"Cee Cee won't believe that," Helen rolled her eyes, "she's far too smart for that."

**"You," Cee Cee interrupted, "need to go home and take an Advil."**

"Listen to your best friend," Helen encouraged the book.

**"You're right," I said, picking up my purse. It matched my slip dress, pink, with little flowers embroidered on it. I was overcompensating for all the days I'd had to wear those khaki shorts. **

"Overcompensating is definitely the word," Jake agreed.

**"I'll go. See you later."**

**Then I got the hell out of there before my head exploded in front of everybody.**

"That would be so awesome in a horror movie," Brad said dreamily.

"That's it! No more graphic violence!"

"But Daaaaaaaaaaad-"

"I said no! If you're picturing you sister's head exploding then it's already affected your mind!"

**But on my way back to Father Dominic's car I realized that the reason I'd been shivering back in the photocopying cubicle hadn't been due to the excessive air-conditioning, the fact that Jesse was gone, or even the fact that two homicidal ghosts were actively trying to kill me.**

"Oh?"

**No, I was shivering because of what I knew I was about to do.**

"Susannah! Don't you dare, young lady!"

**When I got to Father Dom's car, I bent down and said through the open passenger window, "Hey."**

**Father Dominic started and hurled something out the driver's side window.**

"Father Dominic!"

**But it was too late. I'd already seen what he'd been up to. Plus I could smell it.**

"Father Dominic!"

**"Hey," I said again. "Give me one of those."**

"Susannah!"

**"Susannah." Father Dominic looked stern. "Don't be ridiculous. Smoking is an awful habit. Believe me; you do not want to pick it up. How did things go with Miss Wells?"**

"Hypocrite," Brad muttered.

**"Um," I said. "Fine." I'm pretty sure it's a sin to tell a lie to a priest, even a white lie that can't possibly hurt him. But what was I supposed to do? I know him, see. And I know he's going to be completely rigid on the whole exorcism thing.**

**So what else could I do?**

"Listen to Father Dominic and Cee Cee," Helen said.

**"She wants me to stick around, actually," I said, "and help her write it. The story, I mean."**

"I don't believe you!" Brad cried out. "Cee Cee said no such thing!"

"Of course not," Jake rolled his eyes, "it's a lie."

"A terrible one," Andy pointed out, "anyone who knows Suze and Cee Cee, would never have believed it.*

**Father Dominic's white eyebrows met over his silver frames. "Susannah," he said. "We have a great deal to do this afternoon, you and I -"**

**"Yeah," I said. "I know. But this is pretty important. How about I meet you back at your office at the Mission at five?"**

"Say no, say no, say no, say no, say no, say no," Helen prayed quietly to the book.

**Father Dominic hesitated. I could tell he thought I was up to something.**

"She is!"

**Don't ask me how. I mean, I can be quite the angelic type, when I put my mind to it.**

Everyone snorted at that. Suze, angelic? Yeah right.

**"Five o'clock," he said, finally. "And not a minute later or, Susannah, I'm telling you right now, I will telephone your parents and tell them everything."**

"Forget that! Just phone us no and tell us everything!" Helen shrieked.

**"Five o'clock," I said. "Promise."**

**I waved as he drove away, and then, just in case he was looking in his rear-view mirror, made as if to go back into the newspaper building.**

**But instead I slipped around the back of it, then headed toward the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort.**

"Susannah!"

**I had some unfinished business there**

"That's it! Definitely grounded until the day she dies!"


	13. Chapter 13

_Author's Note: thank you all for the lovely reviews, I hope you enjoy this chapter just as much_.

**He wasn't in the pool.**

**He wasn't eating burgers at the Pool House.**

**He wasn't on the tennis courts, at the stables, or in the pro shop.**

**Finally, I decided to check his room, although it didn't make any sense at all that he'd be there. Not on a gloriously sunny day like this one.**

"Unless within the one day Suze has been gone he reverted back to his normal self as his confidence had been dependent of her care, support, and tutoring," David pointed out.

**But when the door to his suite swung open to my knock, that's exactly where I found him. He was, Caitlin informed me tersely, taking a nap.**

"Tersely?" Andy raised an eyebrow.

"_Taking a nap_?!" Brad cried out. "An eight year old?"

**"Taking a nap?" I stared at her. "Caitlin, he's an eight-year-old, not an eight-month-old."**

"Exactly!"

**"He said he was tired," Caitlin snapped at me. "And what are you doing here, anyway? I thought you were supposed to be sick."**

"Ah..."

"Talk about lying to your boss backfiring on you," Jake muttered.

David merely face palmed, it was obvious that missing Jesse had gotten to Suze's intelligence.

**"I am sick," I said, pushing past her into the suite.**

"I doubt she looked it in _that _dress," Helen mumbled.

**Caitlin eyed me disapprovingly. You could tell she was jealous of my slip dress and delicate pink sandals, not to mention my bag. I mean, compared to her, in her regulation Oxford T and pleated khakis, I looked like Gwyneth Paltrow. Only with better hair, of course.**

The boys snorted at that. Suze looked like Gwyneth Paltrow? Yeah right.

**"You don't look very sick to me," Caitlin declared.**

**"Oh, yeah?" I lifted up my bangs so she could see my forehead.**

**She sucked in her breath and made an oh-that-must-have-hurt face. "My God," she said. "How'd you do that?"**

"She was almost murdered by a homicidal ghost that had no right to throw her off _my_ porch," Andy grumbled.

**I thought about saying it was a job-related injury of some kind, so I could milk some disability out of her, **

"Susannah!"

**But I didn't think it would work. Instead, I just said I'd tripped.**

"Good because I would have had you return that money if you did, young lady," Helen snapped.

"Tripped?" Brad repeated disgustedly. "That has to be one of the worst lies ever!"

**"So what are you doing here?" Caitlin wanted to know. "I mean, if you're not here to work."**

"To betray Father Dominic's trust and get herself grounded for all eternity," Helen said angrily.

**"Well," I said. "That's the thing. I felt really guilty, you know, saddling you with Jack, so I got my mom to drop me off here after she took me to the doctor. I'll stay with him for the rest of the day, if you want."**

**Caitlin looked dubious. "I don't know," she said. "You're not in uniform ****-****"**

"Is that a big deal, _really_?"

"Yes, its company policy and she could get them both fired," Andy said sternly.

**"Well, I wasn't going to wear my uniform to the doctor's office," I squealed.**

"But the pink slip dress is perfect?" Brad asked sceptically.

**Really, it was amazing how these elaborate lies were tripping off my tongue. I could hardly believe it myself, and I was the one making them up.**

"I couldn't call them perfect," Jake muttered.

**"I mean, come on. But look, he told me I'm fine, so there's no reason I can't take over for you. We'll just stay here in the suite, if you're that nervous about people seeing me out of uniform. No problem."**

"Don't let her," Helen begged the book, "she's going to end up killing herself!"

**Caitlin glanced at my forehead again. "You're not on any kind of painkiller for that, are you? Because I can't have you baby-sitting all whacked up on Scooby Snacks."**

"Good," Andy said pleased that Caitlinwasn't giving in just like that and upholding the policy.

"She better just tell Suze to go home," Helen agreed not wanting her child to all but kill herself with the help of an eight year old boy.

**I held up the first three ringers of my right hand in the international symbol for scouting.**

**"On my honor," I said, "I am not whacked up on Scooby Snacks."**

"What honour?" Helen muttered. "You're about to get an eight year old to kill you."

**Caitlin glanced at the closed door to Jack's room. "Well," she said, hesitantly.**

"Don't give in!"

**"Oh, come on," I said. "I could really use the dough. And don't you and Jake have a date tonight?"**

Jake avoided the glances his family were giving him.

**Her gaze skittered towards me. "Well," she said, blushing.**

"God," Andy groaned, "I just lost all respect for her."

**Seriously. She blushed.**

**"Yeah," she said. "Actually, we do."**

**God. It had only been a guess.**

**"Don't you want to cut out a little early," I said, "to make yourself, you know, all glam for him?"**

"Don't you dare say yes!"

**She giggled. Caitlin actually giggled. I am telling you, my stepbrothers ought to come with government warning labels: Caution, hazardous when mixed with estrogen.**

The previous glances had now turned into glares. It was now Jake's fault that Caitlin was going to give into Suze.

"I broke up with her!" Jake protested.

"That still doesn't make it better!" David yelped. "In fact it makes it worse because it means she wasn't worth Suze almost killing herself!"

"How the hell was I supposed to know that Suze was doing something as nuts as this!"

Jake was barely forgiven.

**"Okay," she said, and started heading for the door. "My boss'll kill me, though, if he sees you without your uniform, so you've got to stay in the room. Promise?"**

"Idiotic girl," Helen grumbled.

**I had made and broken so many promises in the past twenty-four hours, I didn't think one more could hurt. I went, "Sure thing, Caitlin."**

**And then I walked her to the door.**

**As soon as she was gone, I put down my purse and went into Jack's room. I did not knock first. There is nothing an eight-year-old boy's got that I haven't seen before. Besides, I was still a bit hacked with the little creep.**

"Susannah!"

"That's highly unfair to the child," Andy said, "he had been manipulated and tricked by a spiteful century old ghost that knew far better than he did."

**Jack may have been told to take a nap, but he certainly wasn't doing so. When I walked into his room, he thrust whatever it was he'd been playing with under the blankets and lifted his head from the pillow with his face all screwed up like he was sleepy.**

"Like that ever worked," Brad snorted, "Dad always knew."

"I know how you sleep and it isn't curled up and silent," Andy rolled his eyes.

**Then he saw it was me, threw the covers back, and revealed that not only was he fully dressed, but that he'd been playing with his Gameboy.**

"Boys," Andy rolled his eyes.

**"Suze!" he shouted, when he saw me. "You came back!"**

**"Yeah," I said. It was dark in his room. I went to the French doors and threw open the heavy drapes to let in the sunlight. "I came back."**

**"I thought," Jack said, jumping up and down excitedly on the bed, "that you were mad at me."**

"Oh she is," Jake muttered as his brothers shuddered. An angry Suze was a truly frightening thing.

**"I am mad at you," I said, turning around to look at him. The sight of that sparkling sea had dazzled my eyes, though, so I couldn't see him very well.**

**"What do you mean?" Jack stopped jumping. "What do you mean you're mad at me?"**

"Poor kid," Andy muttered.

**Look, I wasn't going to screw around with the kid, okay? I just wish everyone had been as straight with me when I was his age. It is possible I wouldn't be so quick with my fists if I didn't have this pent-up inner rage from having been lied to so much as an eight-year-old. **

"I didn't lie to her!" Helen shrieked indignantly.

**Yes, Suze, of course there's really a Santa Claus,**

"Ah... well...no one would ant to ruin their child's innocence like that."

"She still believed in Santa hen she was eight?" Brad snorted.

"I wouldn't laugh if I were you Brad," Andy said sternly, "you believed in Santa Claus until you were ten."

**But No, there's no such thing as ghosts. **

"Oh, Susie..."

**And then the clincher, No, this shot I'm about to give you isn't going to hurt a bit.**

Even Andy and Helen chuckled a little.

**"That ghost you exorcised?" I said, facing him with my hands on my hips. "He was my friend. My best friend."**

"A bit more than a best friend," Jake muttered with an eye roll.

**I wasn't going to say boyfriend, or anything, because that wasn't true.**

"Didn't stop you before," Brad pointed out.

**But the hurt I was feeling must have shown in my voice, since Jack's lower lip started to jut out a little.**

**"What do you mean?" he wanted to know. "What do you mean, he was your friend? That's not what that lady said. The lady said ****-****"**

"Forget the lady kid," Jake rolled his eyes. "She was obviously lying."

**"That lady is a liar. That lady," I said, coming swiftly toward the bed and lifting up my bangs, "did this to me last night. See? Or at least, her husband did. All she tried to do was stab me with a knife."**

"At least Suze is trying to be honest with him," Helen murmured.

**Jack, standing on the bed, was taller than I was. He looked down at the bruise on my forehead with something like horror, "Oh, Suze," he breathed. "Oh, Suze."**

"Poor kid," Andy said for what felt like the hundredth time.

**"You screwed up," I said to him, dropping my hand. "You didn't mean to. I understand that Maria tricked you. But you still screwed up, Jack."**

"Susannah!"

**Now his lower lip was trembling. So was his whole chin, actually. And his eyes had filled up with tears.**

"Oh she's grounded just for that!" Helen snarled. "I raised her better than that. Making a child cry...honestly."

**"I'm sorry, Suze," he said. His voice had gone about three pitches higher than usual. "Suze, I'm so sorry!"**

"Poor kid."

**He was trying really hard not to cry. He wasn't succeeding, though. Tears were spilling out of his eyes and rolling down his chubby cheeks . . . the only part of him that was chubby, except maybe for his Albert Einstein hair.**

Brad and Jake snorted at that.

**And even though I didn't want to, I found myself wrapping my arms around him and patting him on the back as he sobbed into my neck, telling him everything was going to be all right.**

"Good!"

**Just like, I realized, with something akin to horror, Father Dominic had done to me!**

"Mother Susannah," Brad muttered to Jake, who tried to smother his laughter.

**And just like him, I was completely lying. Because everything was not going to be all right. Not for me, at least. Not ever again. Unless I did something about it, and fast.**

Andy face palmed, he had hopes that Suze would never be one of _those girls_ who couldn't live without her man, while Helen sighed in grim acceptance. Her child will never be happy without Jesse.

**"Look," I said, after a few minutes of letting Jack wail. "Stop crying. We have work to do."**

"I'm still angry that she's using a child," Helen muttered.

**Jack lifted his head from my shoulder ****-**** which he had, by the way, gotten all wet with snot and tears and stuff, since my dress was sleeveless.**

"Ewww, so gross," Brad groaned.

**"What ... what do you mean?" His eyes were red and squinty from crying. I was lucky nobody walked in right then. I definitely would have been convicted of child abuse or something.**

"More likely forced into a disciplinary hearing and not asked to come back in the next year," Andy said shaking his head.

**"I'm going to try to get Jesse back," I explained, swinging Jack down from the bed. "And you're going to help me."**

"Manipulative child," Helen murmured half fondly for her girl.

**Jack went, "Who's Jesse?"**

**I explained. At least, I tried to. I told him that Jesse was the guy he had exorcised, and that he had been my friend, and that exorcising people was wrong, unless they'd done something very very bad, such as tried to kill you, which was, Jack explained, what Maria had told him Jesse'd tried to do to me.**

**So then I told Jack that ghosts are just like people, some of them are okay, but some of them are liars. If he had ever met Jesse, I assured him, he'd have known right away he was no killer.**

"I don't think Jesse has ever killed a person," Helen said happily.

"I'm sure he _wanted_ to," Jake muttered.

**Maria de Silva, on the other hand...**

**"But she seemed so nice," Jack said. "I mean, she's so pretty and everything."**

"Men," Helen muttered.

"Boys," Andy corrected his wife.

**Men. I'm serious. Even at the age of eight. It's pathetic.**

Helen snickered while her stepsons and husband looked offended.

**"Jack," I said to him. "Have you ever heard the expression, don't judge a book by its cover?"**

Brad rolled his eyes, if he had a dollar every time he heard that he would be a rich man by now.

**Jack wrinkled his nose. "I don't like to read much."**

"Oh dear God," Andy and David moaned.

**"Well," I said. We had gone out into the living room, and now I picked up my purse and opened it. "You're going to have to do some reading if we're going to get Jesse back. I'm going to need you to read this."**

"DON'T DO IT JACK!"

**And I passed him an index card on which I'd scrawled some words. Jack squinted down at it.**

**"What is this?" he demanded. "This isn't English."**

**"No," I said. I started taking other things out of my purse. "It's Portuguese."**

**"What's that?" Jack asked.**

"Oh dear God!"

**"It's a language," I explained, "that they speak in Portugal. Also in Brazil and a few other places."**

**"Oh," Jack said, then pointed at a small Tupperware container I'd taken from my purse. "What's that ?"**

**"Oh," I said. "Chicken blood."**

Everyone grimaced.

**Jack made a face. "Ew!"**

**"Look," I said. "If we're going to do this exorcism, we're going to do it right. And to do it right, you need chicken blood."**

**Jack said, "I didn't use chicken blood when Maria was here."**

"Probably did the Catholic one," David murmured.

**"Yeah," I said. "Well, Maria does things her way, and I do things my way. Now let's go into the bathroom to do this. I have to paint stuff on the floor with the chicken blood, and I highly doubt the housekeeping staff will appreciate it if we do it here on the carpet."**

"I highly doubt the Slater's would appreciate it either," Andy mumbled, but he was glad that his stepdaughter was considerate enough for the housekeeping staff.

**Jack followed me into the bathroom that joined his room to his brother's. In the part of my brain that wasn't concentrating on what I was doing, I kind of wondered where Paul was. It was strange he hadn't called after that whole thing where he'd dropped me off at my house and there'd been all those cop cars and stuff in front of it. I mean, you'd have thought he'd wonder, at least, what that had been all about.**

"One would hope he died," Jake muttered cruelly. He really didn't like Paul.

**But I hadn't heard a peep out of him.**

"Not worth your time then, honey," Andy said.

**Not that I cared. **

"Good!"

**I had way more important things to worry about. But it was still kind of odd.**

"Not really," Brad said, "the guy is a jerk."

**"There," I said when we had everything set up. It took an hour, but when we were done, we had a fairly decent example of how an exorcism ****-**** the Brazilian voodoo variety, anyway ****-**** is supposed to look. At least according to a book I'd read on the subject once.**

Helen groaned inwardly, wondering what she had done to deserve this mental torture.

**With the chicken blood I'd procured from the meat counter of one of the gourmet shops downtown, I'd made these special symbols in the middle of the bathroom floor, and around them I'd stuck assorted candles (the votive kind, the only ones I could get at short notice, between the offices of the Carmel Pine Cone and the hotel; they were cinnamon scented, too, so the bathroom smelled sort of like Christmas . . . well, except for the not-so-festive fragrance of chicken blood).**

"I never want to celebrate Christmas again," David moaned to himself rather sickened.

**In spite of the amateurishness with which it had been thrown together, it was, in fact, a working portal to the afterlife ****-**** or at least it would be, once Jack did his part with the notecard. I'd gone over the pronunciation of each word, and he seemed to have it down pretty well. The only thing he couldn't seem to get around was the fact that the person we were exorcising was, well, me.**

**"But you're alive," he kept saying. "If I exorcise your spirit from you, won't you be dead?"**

"Yes! So don't do it!" Helen shrieked.

**Actually, this was a thought that had not really occurred to me. What would happen to my body after my spirit had left it? Would I be dead?**

**No, that was impossible. My heart and lungs wouldn't stop working just because my soul was gone. Probably I'd just lie there, like someone in a coma.**

"That isn't reassuring!"

**This was not, however, very comforting to Jack.**

"I don't blame the poor kid," Andy cried out.

**"But what if you don't come back?" he wanted to know.**

**"I'm going to come back," I said. "I told you. The only reason I can come back is that I do have a living body to return to. I just want to have a look around out there and see if Jesse's okay. If he is, fine. If not . . . well, I'll try to bring him back with me."**

**"But you just said the only reason you can come back is because you have a living body to return to. Jesse doesn't. So how can he come back?"**

"He'll magically get his own body, apparently," Jake said.

"Magic does seem to be the only explanation in this scenario," David the scientist agreed.

**This was, of course, a good question. That was probably why it put me in such a bad mood.**

"Don't you dare take it out on the kid!" Andy warned the book.

**"Look," I said, finally. "Nobody has ever tried this before, so far as I know. Maybe you don't have to have a body to come back. I don't know, okay? But I can't not try just because I don't know the answer. Where would we be if Christopher Columbus hadn't tried? Huh?"**

"Still living in America," David pointed out, "there would have been no way that this vast land would remain undiscovered to this day. Especially since Vikings had discovered this country centuries before Columbus."

**Jack looked thoughtful. "Living in Spain right now?"**

Brad snickered.

**"Very funny," I said. It was at this point that I took the last thing from my bag and tied one end around my waist. I tied the other end to Jack's wrist.**

**"What's the rope for?" he asked, looking down at it.**

**"So I can find my way back to you," I said.**

"_How does that make sense?!"_ David despaired.

**Jack looked confused. "But if just your spirit's going, what's the point of tying a rope around your body? You said your body wasn't going anywhere."**

"Exactly!"

**"Jack," I said from between gritted teeth. "Just reel me back in if I'm gone more than half an hour, all right?" I figured half an hour was about as long as anybody's soul could be separated from their body. On TV I was always seeing stuff about little kids who'd slipped into icy water and drowned and been technically dead for up to forty minutes, yet recovered without any brain damage or anything. So I figured half an hour was cutting it as close as I could.**

Helen moaned, Andy face palmed, and David felt like banging his head against the all out of despair of how poorly thought out this terrible experiment was.

**"But how ****-****"**

**"Oh my God," I snapped at him. "Just do it, okay?"**

"Susannah!"

**Jack glowered at me. Hey, just because we're both mediators doesn't mean we get along all the time.**

"We already know, you and Father D never get along for long," Jake rolled his eyes.

**"Okay," he said. Under his breath, I heard him mutter, "You don't have to be such a witch about it."**

"Good on you, kid," Andy muttered.

**Only he didn't say witch.**

"I take it back."

His eldest sons however snickered.

**Really, it is shocking; the words kids are using these days.**

**"All right," I said. I stepped into the center of the circle of candles and stood in the middle of all the chicken blood symbols. "Here goes nothing."**

**Jack looked down at his notecard. Then he looked back up at me.**

**"Shouldn't you lie down?" he asked. "I mean, if it's gonna be like you're in a coma, I don't want you to fall down and hurt yourself."**

"A very good point," David nodded, "why didn't Suze think of it herself?"

"Isn't obvious?" Helen asked. "My daughter has lost all common sense and intelligent thought out of the grieve of losing Jesse, if I didn't think she would end up killing herself I would quite happy ho her romantic life has progressed."

"I think Mom lost it," Brad muttered to Jake.

**He was right. I didn't want my hair to catch on fire or anything.**

Helen shuddered while Brad and Jake couldn't help but snicker. _That_ was what Suze was worried about.

**On the other hand, I didn't want to get chicken blood on my dress. I mean, it was an expensive one. Ninety-five dollars at Urban Outfitters.**

"Oh dear God!"

"Vanity thy name is _definitely _Susannah Simon."

**Then I thought, Suze, what is wrong with you? It's just a dress. You're doing this for Jesse. Isn't he worth more than ninety-five dollars?**

"Yes," everyone agreed.

"But he isn't worth you trying to kill yourself," Andy added hastily.

**So I started to lie down.**

**But I had only managed to get down on one knee when there was a terrific thumping on the door to the suite.**

"Oh thank God!" Helen cried out. "Whoever it is I will give them a great big kiss for interrupting my daughter's stupid and insane plan."

**I'll admit it. I panicked. I figured it was the fire department or somebody responding to a report of smoke from someone whose bathroom vent adjoined Jack's.**

**"Quick," I hissed at him. "Blow out all the candles!"**

**While Jack hurried to do as I said, I stumbled to the door.**

**"Who is it?" I called sweetly when I got there.**

Brad snorted, Suze sweet? Yeah right.

**"Susannah," an all-too-familiar voice said. "Open the door this instant."**

"Looks like Mom has to kiss Father D," Brad laughed.

"If he stops my baby from doing something dangerous I'll give him hundreds of kisses," Helen agreed.

Andy scowled as his youngest pressed the book into his hands. "That was the end of the entry, it's your turn now Dad," David said a little nervously.


	14. Chapter 14

_Author's Note: Thank you all for all the lovely reviews. Hope you enjoy this chapter just as much. _

**If you ask me, Father D way overreacted.**

"I immediately disagree," Helen crossed her arms. "If he didn't take you over his knee and then grounded you for all eternity then he under-reacted."

**I mean, first of all, I had the situation completely under control.**

"You were using an _eight year old_, forgot to lay down and therefore give yourself a potential _concussion_, and then worried over a _dress_ of all things, forgive me but that doesn't sound like you had the situation under control at all," David listed everything out with his fingers.

**And second, it wasn't as if we'd sacrificed any small animals, or whatever. I mean, the chicken had already been dead.**

"That isn't the point!"

**So all that stomping around and calling us names was really unnecessary.**

Brad snickered at that. The mental image of Father Dominic sulking like a teenager was too amusing to ignore.

**Not that he called Jack any names. No, most of the names were hurled at me. Apparently, if I am intent on destroying myself, that is one thing. But to force a small boy to aid in my self-destruction? That is just despicable.**

"Well it is!" everybody shouted.

**And my pointing out that the small boy was the one who'd created the need for me to behave self-destructively? Yeah, that didn't go over too well.**

"He is a _child_," Helen snarled at the book, "you, young lady are a young adult in charge of looking after him not using him for your own needs."

**But what the whole thing did do was illustrate to Father Dominic just how serious I was about my plan. I guess it finally got through to him that I was going to do my best to find Jesse, with or without his help.**

"I can't believe he didn't realize how stubborn Suze is until now," Jake rolled his eyes.

**So he decided that, under those circumstances, he had better help, if only to improve my chances of not hurting myself, or anybody else.**

"_WHAT?_!"

**"It will not," he said, looking all tight-lipped about it as he unlocked the doors to the basilica, "be any fly-by-night operation, either. None of this Brazilian voodoo business. We are going to perform a decent Christian exorcism or none at all."**

"I cannot believe it!" Helen shrieked. "That's it! Father Dominic is off the Christmas card list and I'm so going to have words with him!"

**Really, if you think about it, I probably have the most bizarre conversations of anyone on the planet. Seriously. I mean a decent Christian exorcism?**

"That isn't the main issue here!"

**But it isn't just the conversations I have that are bizarre. I mean, the circumstances under which I have them are pretty bizarre, too. For instance, I was having this one in a dark empty church. Dark because it was after midnight, and empty for the same reason.**

**"And you are going to have adult supervision," Father Dominic went on as he ushered me inside. "How you could have expected that boy to successfully perform so complicated a procedure, I simply cannot imagine ..."**

"Probably because he already done one before," Jake muttered with an eye roll. Father D really had small expectations of people sometimes.

**He had been ranting in that particular vain all afternoon. All the way up until Jack's parents ****-**** not to mention Paul ****-**** had gotten back to the suite, as a matter of fact. **

"Eek, that must have been difficult to explain," David grimaced.

"How did Suze get asked back again this year?" Andy asked the ceiling.

**Father D hadn't, of course, been able to whisk me off right away the way he'd wanted to, because of Jack. Instead, Jack and I had been forced to clean up the mess we'd made ****-**** it is no joke sponging chicken blood out from between bathroom tiles, let me tell you ****-**** and then we'd had to sit and wait for Dr. and Mrs. Slater to return from their tennis lesson. Jack's parents had looked a little surprised to find the three of us sitting there on the couch. I mean, think about it: a baby-sitter, a boy, and a priest? Talk about feeling as if you were whacked up on Scooby Snacks.**

"I think they're leaning towards reality TV set up," Jake pointed out, "it's a more likely explanation than drugs."

**But what was I supposed to do? Father D wouldn't leave without me. He didn't trust me not to try exorcising myself.**

"Good!"

**So the three of us sat there while Father D lectured us on the fine art of mediation. He talked for two hours. I'm not kidding. Two hours. I can tell you, Jack was probably regretting ever having told me about the whole I see dead people thing by the end of it. He was probably all, Uh, yeah, about the dead people? Joking, guys. I was joking...**

"Somehow I don't think it's that easy to take back," Andy said sadly. Knowing that is probably how Suze felt most of the time.

**But I don't know, maybe it was good the little guy got the do's and don'ts. God knew I hadn't been too lucid with my own Intro to Mediation. I mean, if I'd been a little clearer on the finer points, maybe this whole thing with Jesse would never have ****–**

"I doubt it," David said mournfully, "after all Maria is an expert at manipulation and unless the finer points included an introduction with Jesse I doubt Jack would have a clue about him and still exorcise him."

**But whatever. You can only beat yourself up so much. I was fully aware the entire mess was my own fault. That's why I was so intent on fixing it.**

"It wasn't your fault!"

"I didn't realize your name was Maria Diego."

**Oh, and the part about my being in love with the guy? Yeah, that had a little something to do with it, too.**

"Of course," Brad rolled his eyes.

Helen couldn't help a little sigh at the romance of it all. She was still pissed at her daughter though.

**Anyway, that's what we were doing when Jack's parents walked in: listening to Father D drone on about responsibility and courtesy when dealing with the undead.**

**Father Dominic dried up when Dr. and Mrs. Slater, followed by Paul, came into the suite. They, in turn, stopped chatting about their dinner plans and just stood there, staring.**

**Paul was the one who came out of it first.**

**"Suze," he said, smiling. "What a surprise. I thought you weren't feeling well."**

"Don't smile at my sister, you creep," Jake growled.

**"I recovered," I said, standing up. "Dr. and Mrs. Slater, Paul, this is, um, the principal of my school, Father Dominic. He was nice enough to give me a ride over so that I could, um, visit Jack ..."**

"That didn't sound pathetic at all," Brad rolled his eyes.

**"How do you do?" Father Dominic got quickly to his feet. Like I said, Father D's no slouch in the looks department. He cut a pretty impressive figure, all snowy-topped six feet of him. He didn't look like the kind of guy you'd feel funny about finding in your hotel suite with your eight-year-old and his baby-sitter, which is saying quite a lot, you know.**

"I'm not sure whether I should be disturbed, worried, or pleased about that," Andy muttered.

**When Dr. and Mrs. S heard that Father D was affiliated with the Junipero Serra Mission, they got all chummy and started saying how they'd been on the tour, and how impressive it was and all. I guess they didn't want him to think they were the kind of people who came to a town with a historically significant slice of Americana attached to it, and then spent the whole time they were there playing golf and downing mimosas.**

"Though they did come to a town with a historically significant slice of Americana attached to it, and then spent the whole time playing tennis and eating at the hotel," Andy grumbled.

**While his parents and Father D schmoozed, Paul sidled up to me and whispered, "What are you doing tonight?"**

"None of your effing business," Jake snarled.

**I thought about telling him the truth: "Oh, nothing. Just having my soul exorcised so I can roam around purgatory, looking for the ghost of the dead cowboy who used to live in my bedroom."**

Brad cackled at that. "Bradley," Andy warned.

"No," Brad protested, "think about it, it sounds like a terrible lie to reject Slater," he then broke down into fresh snickers as his brothers also laughed and Andy couldn't help but chortle.

**But that, you know, might have sounded flippant, or like one of those made-up excuses girls use. You know, the old "I'm washing my hair" put-down. So I just said, "I've got plans."**

Brad was now lying on the floor howling with laughter.

"Okay," Helen snapped impatiently, "that's enough!"

**Paul went, "Too bad. I was hoping we could take a drive up to Big Sur and watch the sunset, **

"Watch the sunset my ass," Jake glared at the book.

**Then maybe grab something to eat."**

**"Sorry," I said, with a smile. "Sounds great, but like I said, I've got plans."**

"Thank God," Jake muttered.

**Most guys would have dropped it after that, but Paul, for some reason, did not. He even reached out and casually draped an arm around my shoulders ... if you can do something like that casually. Somehow, though, he pulled it off. Maybe because he's from Seattle.**

"Hands off my sister," Jake snarled.

**"Suze," he said, dipping his voice low, so that no one else in the room could overhear him ****-**** especially his little brother, who was clearly straining his neck in an effort to do so. "It's Friday night. We're leaving day after tomorrow. You and I might never see each other again. Come on. Throw a guy a bone, will you?"**

"Oh come on," Jake mimicked, "you're going back to Seattle, leave the girl alone and find some other moronic bimbo who'll put out for you after a few honeyed words!"

"Jake!" Andy snapped. "That is enough for you as well!"

**I don't have guys pursuing me all that often ****-**** at least, not hotties like Paul. I mean, most of the guys who've liked me since I moved to California . . . well, there've been some serious relationship issues, such as the fact that they ended up serving long prison terms for murder.**

"Like we needed that reminder," Helen shivered as the others scowled at the book.

**So this was pretty new for me. I was impressed in spite of myself.**

"Trust us," David said to the book, "the only guy you liked that was decent enough for you, and isn't Jesse, was Adam, and he's just a friend."

"And Cee Cee's," Jake added with a sly grin.

**Still, I'm not a dope. Even if I hadn't been in love with somebody else, Paul Slater was from out of town. It's easy for guys who are leaving in a couple of days to give a girl the rush. I mean, come on: they don't have to commit.**

"Exactly! Thank God Suze has some brains!"

**"Gosh," I said. "That is just so sweet. But you know what? I really do have other plans." I stepped out from beneath his arm and totally interrupted Dr. Slater's in-depth description of that day's golf score ****-**** bogey, bogey, par, par. "Can you give me a lift home, Father D?"**

**Father Dominic said he could, of course, and we left. I noticed Paul giving me the old hairy eyeball as we said our good-byes, **

Jake fought back the urge to mutter something about gorging Slater's eyes out.

**But I figured it was because he was hacked at me for turning down his dinner invitation.**

"Egotistic boys," Andy rolled his eyes.

**I didn't know it was for entirely different reasons. At least, not then. Although, of course, I should have. I really should have.**

**Anyway, Father D lectured me all the way home. He was way mad, madder than he'd ever been with me before, and I've done some stuff that's gotten him plenty peeved. I wanted to know how he'd figured out I was at the hotel and not back at the paper helping Cee Cee write her story, like I'd said I'd be, and he said it hadn't been hard: he just remembered that Cee Cee was a straight-A student who surely wouldn't need my help writing anything, and turned his car around. When he found out I'd left ten minutes earlier, he tried to think where he would have gone under similar circumstances, back when he was my age.**

"So not the bar then," Brad smirked.

"You better not be going to bars either, young man," Andy said sternly.

**"The hotel was the obvious choice," Father Dominic informed me as we pulled up in front of my house. No ambulances this time, I was relieved to note.**

"Trust me," Helen moaned, "you weren't the only one."

**Just the shady pine trees and the tinny sound of the radio Andy was listening to in the backyard as he worked on the deck. A sleepy summer evening. Not at all the kind of night you'd think of when you heard the word exorcism.**

"We should so watch that movie with Suze after this!" Brad exclaimed.

"Nah," Jake said dismissively, "she'll only ruin it by pointing out all the inaccuracies."

**"You are not," Father D went on, "precisely unpredictable, Susannah."**

"No truer words have been spoken," Brad said solemnly.

**Predictable I may be, but it has apparently worked to my advantage, since right before I got out of the car, Father D went, "I'll return at midnight to bring you down to the Mission."**

"I might just slap him as well," Helen grumbled.

**I looked at him in surprise. "The Mission?"**

**"If we're going to perform an exorcism," he said, tersely, "we're going to do it correctly, in a house of the Lord. Unfortunately the monsignor, as you know, is sure to frown on such a use of church property, so while I dislike having to resort to subterfuge, I can see that you will not be swayed from this course, and so it will unfortunately be necessary in this case. I want to make certain there's no chance of Sister Ernestine or anyone else discovering us. **

"Oh gawd can you imagine the-"

"SHUT UP BRAD!"

**Therefore, midnight it will have to be."**

**And midnight, therefore, it was.**

"Slap him really hard..."

**I can't really tell you what I did in the meantime. I was too nervous, really, to do much of anything. We had takeout for dinner. I don't know what it was. I hardly tasted it. **

"Just as well," Andy muttered, "it was a terrible dinner, undercooked meat, lack of seasoning, and not to mention how soggy the chips were."

"It was that or I could try to cook again," Helen glowered at him.

"Darling, I love you with all my heart and there is nothing about you that I wouldn't change," Andy started, "but your cooking gives me food poisoning."

**It was just me and my mom and Andy, since Sleepy had a date with Caitlin, and Dopey was with his latest skank.**

"I was with Debbie!" Brad shouted scandalized.

"Eh," Jake shrugged, "she is a bit of a skank."

"Jake!" Andy shouted.

**The only thing I know for sure is that Cee Cee called with the news that the story on the dysfunctional de Silva/Diego family was going to run in the Sunday edition of the paper.**

"And in my scrapbook by Sunday evening," Andy said fondly.

**"It'll reach thirty-five thousand people," Cee Cee assured me. "Way more than our circulation during the week. More people subscribe to the Sunday paper, because of the funnies and all."**

**The coroner, she informed me, had come through with a tentative confirmation of my story: the skeleton found in my backyard was between one hundred and fifty to one hundred and seventy-five years old, and belonged to a male of twenty to twenty-five years of age.**

**"Race," Cee Cee went on, "is difficult to determine due to the damage to the skull from Brad's shovel. **

"Itwas an accident!"

**But they were certain about the cause of death."**

**I clutched the receiver to my ear, conscious that my mother and Andy, over at the dinner table, could hear every word.**

"Oh, Susie!"

**"Oh?" I said, trying to keep my tone light. But I could feel myself getting cold again, just like I had that afternoon in the photocopy cubicle.**

**"Asphyxiation," Cee Cee said. "There's like some bone in the neck they can tell by."**

David grimaced at that.

**"So he was ..."**

**"Strangled," **

"Poor bloke," Andy murmured as he wrapped an arm round his shivering wife.

**Cee Cee said matter-of-factly. "Hey, what are you doing tonight, anyway? Wanna hang? Adam's got some family thing he has to go to. We could rent a movie- "**

"That's a sudden change of topic," Jake muttered.

**"No," I said. "No, I can't. Thanks, Cee Cee. Thanks a lot."**

**I hung up the phone.**

**Strangled. Jesse had died from being strangled. By Felix Diego. Funny, I had somehow always figured he'd been shot to death. **

"That wouldn't have made any sense," David shook his head, "after all it wouldn't be a mystery if you could hear the murder taking place."

**But strangling made more sense: people would have heard a shot and come to investigate. Then there'd have been no question about what happened to Hector de Silva.**

**But strangling someone? That was pretty much silent. Felix could easily have strangled Jesse in his sleep, then carried his dead body into the backyard and then buried it, along with his belongings. No one would have been the wiser ...**

Helen shivered and snuggled into Andy.

**I guess I must have stood there looking down at the phone for a while, since my mom went, "Suze? Are you all right, honey?"**

"_Why did I believe her?!"_

**I jumped and went, "Yeah, Mom. Sure. I'm fine."**

**But I hadn't been fine then. And I certainly wasn't fine now.**

**I had only been to the Mission after dark a couple times before, and it was still as creepy now as it had been then . . . long shadows, dark recesses, spooky noises as our footsteps echoed down the aisle between the pews. There was this statue of the Virgin Mary right by the doorway, and Adam had told me once that if you walked by it while thinking an impure thought, the statue would weep blood.**

"I thought that was in Father Dom's office," Jake frowned.

"It got moved after your year played a prank with it," David explained.

"Oh...I think I had been asleep during that."

**Well, my thoughts as I walked into the basilica weren't exactly impure, but I noticed as I passed the Virgin Mary that she looked more particularly prone to weeping blood than usual. Or maybe it was just the dark.**

"Just the dark," Helen said quickly.

"But it is a joy to me that Suze is still a virgin," Andy said solemnly.

Helen elbowed him for that.

**In any case, I was creeped out. Above my head yawned the huge dome you could see, glowing red in the sun and blue in the moon, from my bedroom window, while before me loomed the chancel in which the altar glowed, swathed in white.**

**Father Dom had been busy, I saw when I entered the church. Candles had been set up in a wide circle just before the altar rail. Father Dominic, still muttering to himself about my need for adult supervision, stooped down and began lighting the wicks.**

**"That's where you're ****-**** I mean, we're ****-**** going to do it?" I asked.**

**Father Dominic straightened and surveyed his handiwork.**

**"Yes," he said. Then, misreading my expression, he added dourly, "Don't let the absence of chicken blood fool you, Susannah. I assure you the Catholic exorcism ceremony is highly effective."**

"And it's cleaner," Helen murmured thankfully.

**"No," I said quickly. "It's just that ..."**

**I looked at the floor in the middle of the circle of candles. The floor looked very hard ****- ****way harder than the bathroom floor back at the hotel. That was tile. This was marble. Remembering what Jack had said, I went, "What if I fall down? I might conk my head again."**

"Didn't we go through this before?" Jake rolled his eyes.

**"Fortunately, you will be lying down," Father D said.**

**"Can't I have a pillow or something?" I asked. "I mean, come on. That floor looks cold." I glanced at the altar cloth. "How about that? Can I lie on that?"**

"Susannah!" Andy cried out horrified. "That would be sacrilegious!"

**Father Dominic looked pretty shocked for a guy who was about to exorcise a girl who was neither possessed nor dead.**

"Unwillingly," Jake pointed out.

"Willingly enough," Helen murmured angrily.

**"For goodness' sake, Susannah," he said. "That would be sacrilegious."**

**Instead he went and got some choir robes for me. I made a nice little bed on the floor between all the candles, then lay down on it. It was actually quite comfortable.**

**Too bad my heart was pounding way too hard for me ever to have been able to doze off.**

**"All right, Susannah," Father D said. He wasn't happy with me. He hadn't been happy with me, I knew, for some time. But he was bowing to the inevitable. Still, he seemed to feel one last lecture was necessary. "I am willing to help you with this ridiculous scheme of yours, but only because I realize that if I do not, you will try to do it on your own, or with, God forbid, that boy's help." Father D was looking at me very sternly from where he stood. "But do not think for one minute that I approve."**

"Then don't do it!"

**I opened my mouth to argue, but Father Dominic held up one hand.**

**"No," he said. "Allow me to finish, please. What Maria de Silva did was wrong, and I realize you are only trying to correct that wrong. But I am afraid I cannot see any of this ending happily. It is my experience, Susannah ****-**** and I hope you will agree that my experience is significantly greater than yours ****-**** that once spirits are exorcised, they stay that way."**

Helen bit her tongue to prevent a shrill scream leave her mouth. _Her daughter might not come back? _She struggled to remember that Suze is fine and alive and on a date right now.

**Again I opened my mouth, and again Father D shushed me.**

Andy gritted his teeth at that. He would definitely be having his own words with Father Dominic.

**"Where you are going," he went on, "will be like a waiting area for spirits who have passed from the astral plane but have not yet reached their final destination. If Jesse is still there, and you manage to find him - and you understand that I consider this a very great if, because I don't think you're going to - do not be surprised if he chooses to stay where he is."**

"Nah, he'll come back for Suze," Brad said confidently and unbothered by the whole thing.

**"Father D," I began, rising up onto my elbows, but he shook his head.**

**"It might be his only chance, Susannah," Father Dominic said somberly, "of ever moving on."**

"Or coming back alive," David added with a small grin.

**"No," I said. "That's not true. There's a reason, see, that he's hung around my house for so long. All he has to do is figure out what that reason is, and he'll be able to move on on his own - "**

**"Susannah," Father Dominic interrupted. "I'm sure it isn't that simple- "**

**"He has a right," I insisted through gritted teeth, "to decide for himself."**

**"I agree," Father Dominic said. "That's what I'm trying to say, Susannah. If you find him, you must let him decide. And you mustn't . . . well, you mustn't attempt to use any sort of, err ..."**

"Huh?" Brad murmured dumbly.

**I just bunked up at him. "Father D," I said. "What are you talking about?"**

**"Well, it's only that. . ." Father Dominic looked more embarrassed than I had ever seen him. I could not, for the life of me, figure out what was wrong with him. "I see that you changed ..."**

"Into something more suitable I hope," Helen said.

**I looked down at myself. I had changed out of my pink slip dress and into a black one that had little red rosebuds embroidered on it. **

"Is that suitable enough?" Jake grinned.

"No," Helen sighed. "I was hoping she'd put on a pair of jeans."

**This I had paired with some totally cute Prada slides. I had had a hard enough time choosing an ensemble. I mean, what do you wear to an exorcism? **

"Pants," Brad stated.

**I totally did not need Father D dissing my duds.**

**"What?" I demanded defensively. "What's wrong with it? Too funereal? It's too funereal, isn't it? I knew black was all wrong for the occasion."**

Helen and Andy face palmed, David despaired, and Jake and Brad laughed hysterically at that. Trust Suze to care more about her appearance over practicality.

**"Nothing's wrong with it," Father Dominic said. "It's simply that . . . Susannah, you mustn't attempt to use your, um, sexual wiles to influence Jesse's decision."**

"I beg your pardon?!"

**My mouth dropped open. Okay. Now I was mad.**

"So am I," Helen fumed, "did he just suggest that my daughter is some sort of seductive harlot?!"

"I'm more surprised that he would think that Jesse would need to be seduced to come back," David said mildly horrified at the idea.

**"Father Dominic!" I sat up and yelled. After that, though, I was completely speechless. I couldn't think of anything to say except, "As if ."**

"Oh come on, you would!" Brad cried out to the book. "You're a crazy chick in love with the guy. The only thing you wouldn't do for him is murder."

"I don't know I think she would kill Maria and Diego if she got the chance," Jake pointed out uncomfortably.

**"Susannah," Father Dominic said severely. "Don't pretend you don't know what I mean. I know you care about Jesse. All I'm asking is that you don't use your" - he cleared his throat - "feminine charms to manipulate his -"**

"Hmm," Helen huffed.

**"Like I could ," I grumbled.**

"Oh you, could," the boys grimaced. They have all been made far to aware of their sister's feminine charm in the last three books.

**"Yes." Father Dominic's tone was firm. "You could. All I'm asking is that you don't. For the good of both of you. Don't ."**

Helen grumbled darkly at that. Father Dominic had no right to get between the perfect man for her daughter and her daughter!

**"Fine," I said. "I won't. I wasn't planning to."**

"Lies," Brad hissed dramatically.

**"I'm delighted to hear that," Father Dominic said. He opened a small, leather-bound book and began flipping through the pages. "Shall we begin, then?"**

"Never again am I inviting him to a Sunday dinner," Andy muttered.

**"I suppose." Still grumbling, I lay back down. I couldn't believe Father D had just suggested what he had - that I would use my sex appeal to lure Jesse back to me. Ha! Father D was overlooking two simple things: one being that I'm not so sure I have sex appeal,**

"Trust us," Jake said looking sick to the stomach, "you have far too much sex appeal for our comfort."

"Too many boys to beat up," Brad agreed.

**And two, that if I do, Jesse had certainly never noticed.**

"Oh he has," Jake muttered darkly, "or you wouldn't be on a date right now."

**Still, Father Dominic had felt obliged to say something about it, which must mean he'd noticed something. Must be the dress. Not bad for fifty-nine ninety-five. As I lay there, a slow grin crept over my face. Father D had used the word sexual . About me !**

"E w!"

**Excellent.**

"Ewwwwww!"

**Father D began reading from his little book. As he read, he swung this metal ball that had smoke coming out of it. The smoke was from the incense burning inside the metal ball. Let me tell you, it stank.**

**I couldn't understand what Father D was saying, since it was all in Latin. It sounded nice, though. I lay there in my black slip dress and wondered if I ought to have worn pants. I mean, who knew what I was going to find up there? What if I had to do some climbing? People might see my underwear.**

"And that's why you should have worn pants!" Jake snapped exasperated.

**You would have thought I'd be pondering more profound thoughts than this, but I am very sorry to report that the most deepest thing I thought about while Father Dominic was exorcising my soul was that when this was all over, and Jesse was home, and Maria and Felix had been locked back up in their crypt, where they belonged, I was going to have to take a really long soak in that hot tub Andy was installing, because let me you tell you, I was sore .**

"That would explain why we had to drag her out kicking and screaming that time," Andy grinned.

**And then something started happening above my head. A section of the domed ceiling disappeared, and was replaced by all this smoke. Then I realized it was the smoke from the incense Father D was waving around. It was curling like a tornado above my head.**

Helen shuddered.

**Then, in the center of the tornado, I saw the night sky. Really. Like the dome over the top of the basilica wasn't there anymore. I could see stars twinkling coldly. I didn't recognize any constellations, even though Jesse had been trying to teach them to me. **

"How romantic," Helen cooed quietly, though her heart wasn't really in it. She was too worried about her daughter right now.

**Back in Brooklyn, you couldn't see the stars so well, because of the city lights. So other than the Big Dipper, which you can always see, I don't know the names of any of the constellations.**

David muttered quietly to himself about pollution.

**It didn't matter. This wasn't the sky I was seeing. Not Earth's sky, anyway. It was something else. Someplace else.**

David leaned in interested.

**"Susannah," Father Dominic said gently.**

**I started, then looked at him. I had been, I realized, half asleep, staring up at that sky.**

**"What?" I asked.**

**"It's time," Father Dominic said.**

"And that's the end of the entry," Andy said passing the book to a very reluctant Helen.


	15. Chapter 15

_Author's Note: Thank you everyone who has reviewed the previous chapter. I thank you all for your patience since I had stopped writing until my laptop could be mended and then had to wait for a replacement. Also I felt the need to wait since the last chapter only got seven reviews to begin with. Updates will be a little slower since I do have a life and am very busy trying to get a job but they will be there. I won't leave this fic uncompleted so stop worrying. _

Helen took a great deep breath and then glowered at her stepsons. "I want no interruptions until Suze is back in her body safe and sound, got it?"

"Yes, Mom," the three boys chorused in unison.

**Father Dominic looks funny, I thought. Why does he look so funny?**

"Probably because you're dead," Brad muttered quietly enough not to have been heard by his stepmother.

**I realized why when I sat up. That's because only part of me sat up. The rest of me stayed where I was, lying on the choir robes with my eyes closed.**

Everyone shivered at that. It just sounded so..._unnatural_.

**You know on Sabrina the Teenage Witch when she splits into two people, so one can go to the party with Harvey and the other can go to the witch convention with her aunts? That's what had happened to me. I was two people now.**

"Awesome," Brad breathed**. **

**Except that only one of them was conscious. The other half was just lying there with her eyes closed.**

"Not awesome," Brad corrected himself quietly.

**And you know what? That bruise on my forehead really did look disgusting. No wonder everyone who saw it recoiled in horror.**

"I thought she died or something," Helen muttered disgustedly as she remembered that goddamn bruise.

**"Susannah," Father Dominic said. "Are you all right?"**

**I tore my gaze from my unconscious self.**

**"Fine," I said. **

"Yeah right," Jake rolled his eyes.

**I looked down at my spiritual self, which appeared to me to be exactly the same as the person beneath me, except that I was glowing a little. An excellent fashion accessory, by the way, if you can get it. You know, that all-over spectral glow can really do things for a girl's complexion.**

Everyone rolled their eyes at that.

**Plus something else. The bruise on my forehead? Yeah, it didn't hurt anymore.**

"Well that's something," Helen grumbled quietly to herself.

**"You don't have much time," Father Dominic said. "Just half an hour."**

"Damn!" Brad yelped unwillingly. He wasn't concerned because Suze was fine but still…half an hour wasn't long…Helen moaned quietly to herself.

**I blinked at him. "How am I supposed to know when half an hour is up? I don't have a watch." I don't wear one because somehow they always end up getting smashed by some recalcitrant spirit. Besides, who wants to know what time it is? The news is almost always disappointing.**

Jake couldn't help but snort at that while Andy noted to look into some sort of damage resistant watch for Suze.

**"Wear mine," Father Dom said, and he took off his enormous steel-link man watch and gave it to me. It was the first object I picked up in my new ghostly state. It felt absurdly heavy. Still, I managed to fasten it around my wrist, where it jangled loosely, like a bracelet. Or a prison shackle.**

Helen shivered at that, she still had nightmares of Suze becoming a convicted criminal.

**"Okay," I said, looking up at that hole above me. "Here goes nothing."**

**I had to climb, of course. Don't ask me why I hadn't thought of this. I mean, I had to reach up and grab the edges of that hole in time and space and boost myself up into it. And in a slip dress, no less.**

"Ah, its fine, Father Dom isn't likely to sneak a peek," Jake said dismissively.

**Whatever. I was about halfway in when I heard a familiar voice shriek my name.**

"What is it now?" Helen moaned.

**Father Dominic spun around. I leaned down from the hole ****-**** through which I could only see fog, gray fog that spritzed my face damply ****-**** and saw Jack, of all people, running down the church aisle toward us, his pale face white with fear, and something trailing behind him.**

"What does that kid want _now_?" Jake groused under his breath/

**Father Dominic reached out and caught him just before he flung himself on my unconscious form. He obviously didn't see my legs dangling from the enormous tear in the church ceiling.**

"That would have scarred him for life" Brad snickered.

**"What are you doing here?" Father Dominic demanded, his face almost as white as the kid's. "Do you have any idea what time it is? Do your parents know you're here? They must be worried sick ****-****"**

"I doubt they noticed he was gone," Andy muttered darkly.

**"They're ****-**** they're asleep," Jack panted. "Please, Suze forgot ... she forgot her rope." Jack held up the long white object that had been skittering along behind him as he'd run between the pews. It was my rope from our first attempt to exorcise me. "How is she going to find her way back without her rope?"**

"Good point," Andy's eyes widened.

**Father Dominic took the rope from Jack without a word of thanks. "It was very wrong of you, Jack," he said disapprovingly, "to come here. What could you have been thinking? I told you it was going to be very dangerous."**

"Never mind that!" Helen snapped at the book. "He was trying to keep Suzie alive!"

**"But ..." Jack kept looking at my unconscious half. "Her rope. She forgot her rope."**

**"Here," I called, from my celestial hole. "Toss it up here."**

**Jack looked up at me, and the anxiety left his face.**

**"Suze!" he yelled delightedly. "You're a ghost!"**

Brad shuddered at the idea of ghost! Suze, he would never have a moment's peace.

**"Shh!" Father Dominic looked pained. "Really, young man, you must keep your voice down."**

**"Hi, Jack," I said from my hole. "Thanks for bringing the rope. How'd you get down here, anyway?"**

**"Hotel shuttle," Jack said proudly. "I snuck onto it. It was coming into town to pick up a lot of drunk people. When it stopped near the Mission, I snuck off."**

"Nice," Brad grinned appreciatively.

**I couldn't have been prouder if he'd been my own son.**

"It's nothing to be proud of!" Helen shrieked at the book. Suze needed to work on her priorities.

**"Good thinking," I said.**

**"This," Father Dominic moaned, "is the last thing we need right now. Here, Susannah, take the rope, and for the love of God, hurry ****-****"**

**I leaned down and grabbed the end of the rope, then tied it securely around my waist. "Okay," I said. "If I'm not back in half an hour, start pulling."**

**"Twenty-five minutes," Father Dominic corrected me. "We lost time, thanks to this young man's interruption." **

Helen shuddered at that. Time was running out and if Suze didn't get a move on she might just die.

**He took a pocket watch from his coat with the hand that wasn't clutching the other end of the rope. "Go now, Susannah," he urged me.**

**"Right," I said. "Okay. Be right back."**

**And then I swung my legs into the hole. When I looked down, I could see Father Dominic and Jack standing there, peering up at me. And I could also see me, asleep like Snow White, in a circle of dancing candle flames. Although I doubt Snow White ever wore Prada.**

"I doubt Snow White ever wore anything so revealing," Jake muttered, he had seen Suze in that dress it was far too short for his liking.

**I got up and looked around me. Nothing.**

**I'm serious. There was nothing there. Just that black sky, through which a few stars burned coldly. And then there was the fog. Thick, ever-moving, cool fog. I should have, I thought to myself with a shiver, worn a sweater. The fog seemed to weigh down the air I was taking into my lungs. It also seemed to serve as a muffler. I couldn't hear a sound, not even my own footsteps.**

"Huh," Brad murmured/

**Oh, well. Twenty-five minutes wasn't long. I sucked in a chestful of damp air and yelled, "Jesse!"**

**It was a highly effective move. Not that Jesse showed up. Oh, no. But this other guy did.**

"Oh great," Jake muttered.

**In a gladiator outfit, no less.**

"You're kidding?" Brad's eyes lit up at that.

**I'm not even kidding. He looked like the guy from my mom's American Express card (which I frequently borrow, with her permission, of course).**

**You know, the broom sticking out of his helmet, the leather miniskirt, the big sword. I couldn't see his feet on account of the fog, but I assumed that, if I could, he'd be wearing lace-up sandals (so unflattering on people with fat knees).**

Jake and David rolled their eyes and Brad snorted at that. Trust Suze to pay attention to someone's outfit in a situation like this.

**"You," he said, in this deep, no-nonsense voice, "do not belong here."**

"Thank you," Helen said gratefully to the book, "now give her Jesse and send her home."

**See. I knew the slip dress had been a mistake. But who knew purgatory had a dress code?**

"I doubt it was your dress he objected to," David rolled his eyes "more likely your state of living."

**"I know," I said, giving him my best smile. Maybe Father D was right. Maybe I do have a tendency to use my sexuality to get what I want. I was certainly laying on the girlie thing thick for the Russell Crowe type in front of me.**

The boys grimaced they didn't need the image of Suze flirting with Russell Crowe in their minds at all.

**"The thing is," I said, fingering my rope. "I'm looking for a friend. Maybe you know him. Jesse de Silva? He showed up here last night, I think. He's about twenty, six feet tall, black hair, dark eyes-" Killer abs?**

"Please tell me that she didn't actually say that," Jake groaned.

"Well…the killer abs was a thought," Helen said hesitatingly.

**Russell Crowe must not have been listening closely, since all he said was, "You do not belong here," again.**

**Okay, the slip dress had definitely been a mistake. Because how was I supposed to kick this guy out of my way without splitting the skirt?**

"It's a ghostly skirt!" Jake retorted. "You won't really be splitting the skirt!"

**"Look, mister," I said, striding up to him and trying not to notice that his pectoral muscles were so pronounced, his breasts were bigger than mine. **

Brad giggled childishly at that/

**Way bigger.**

Brad's laughter got louder until Helen glared at him and he stopped abruptly as he hastily tried to place a solemn facial expression.

**"I told you. I'm looking for someone. Now either you tell me if you've seen him, or you get out of my face, okay? I'm a mediator, all right? I have just as much right to be here as you."**

**I did not, of course, know if this was true, but heck, I've been a mediator all my life, and I haven't gotten squat for it. As far as I was concerned, somebody owed me, but big.**

"True," Andy mumbled.

**The gladiator seemed to agree. He went, in a completely different tone, "A mediator?" He looked down at me as if I were a monkey that had suddenly sat up and started saying the Pledge of Allegiance.**

Now David struggled to hide his giggles from Helen.

**Still, I must have done something right, since he said slowly, "I know the one of whom you speak."**

**Then he seemed to come to a decision. Stepping to one side, he said in a commanding voice, "Go now. Do not open any doors. He will come."**

"Oh thank God," Helen sighed in relief, one problem down just a dozen more to go.

**I stared at him. Whoa. "Are you . . . are you serious?"**

"Don't question it!" Helen hissed.

**For the first time, he showed some personality. He went, "Do I seem to be joking to you?"**

**"Um," I said. "No."**

**"Because I am the gatekeeper. I do not joke. Go now." He pointed. "You have not much time."**

Helen's grip on the book tightened at that.

**Off in the distance, in the direction he was pointing, I saw something. I don't know what it was, but it was something other than fog. I felt like hugging my new gladiator friend, but I restrained myself. He didn't seem the touchy-feely sort.**

"Something tells me Suze will be damned to hell if she did that," Jake muttered to Brad who smirked at that.

**"Thanks," I said. "Thanks a whole lot."**

**"Hurry," the gatekeeper said. "And remember, whatever you do, do not go toward the light."**

"You've got to be kidding me," Brad muttered.

**I had given the rope a yank so that Father D would give me some slack. Now I just stood there with it in my hands, staring at the gladiator.**

**"Don't go in the light?" I echoed. "You're not serious."**

**I swear to you, he sounded indignant. "I told you before, I do not joke. Why do you think I would say something I do not mean?"**

"Don't push it!" Helen snarled at the book. She didn't want this gladiator to smite her child.

**I wanted to tell him that the whole don't-go-into-the-light thing was way overplayed. I mean, Poltergeist One through Three had pretty much run that line into the ground.**

**But who knew? Maybe the guy who wrote those movies was a mediator. Maybe he and the gatekeeper were pals or something.**

"That would be so awesome," Brad muttered.

**"Okay," I said, sidling past him. "Gotcha. Don't go in the light."**

**"Or open any doors," the gatekeeper reminded me.**

"I wonder what is behind the doors," David mumbled to himself.

**"No doors," I said, pointing at him and winking. "You got it."**

**Then I turned around, and the fog was gone.**

**Well, not gone, really. I mean, it was still there, licking at my heels. But most of it had given way, so that I could see I was in a corridor lined with doors. There was no ceiling overhead, just those coldly winking stars and inky black sky. Still, the long corridor of closed doors seemed to stretch out forever before me.**

**And I wasn't supposed to open any of those doors. Or go into the light.**

**Well, the second part was easy. I didn't see any light to go toward. But how was I not supposed to open one of those doors? I mean, really. What was going on behind them? What would I find if I opened one, just a crack, and peeked in? Alternate universe? The planet Vulcan? Maybe a world where Suze Simon was a normal girl, not a mediator? Maybe one where Suze Simon was homecoming queen and the most popular person in the whole school, and Jesse wasn't a ghost and could actually take her to dances and had his own car and didn't live in her bedroom?**

Helen sighed blissfully at that. It sounded like a perfect world.

**Then I stopped wondering what was behind all those doors. That's because coming down the hallway toward me ****-**** as if he'd just materialized there from out of nowhere ****-**** came Jesse.**

"Oh thank god!"

**He looked pretty surprised to see me. I don't know if it was the fact that I was standing there in what was, I suppose, heaven's waiting room, or if it was the attractive length of cord around my waist, which did not, I have to admit, go with the rest of my outfit.**

"Oh for fu- crying out loud," Jake amended quickly enough, "how you look isn't important at this point of time."

**Whatever it was, he looked pretty shocked.**

"I would be to if I died, passed over and then suddenly Suze is a ghost chasing after me to ensure it was what I wanted," Andy mumbled.

**"Oh," I said, reaching up to make sure my bangs were covering my unsightly bruise. "Hi."**

Brad snorted, how articulate of Suze.

**Jesse froze in his tracks and just stared at me. It was like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. He didn't look any different from the last time I'd seen him. I mean, the last time I'd seen his ghost. The last time I'd seen him, of course, it had been a view of his rotten corpse, and the sight had, of course, made me lose my supper.**

Helen swallowed feeling the urge to lose her supper as well.

**But this Jesse was a lot easier on the eyes.**

Jake grimaced at that, David stifled a groan, and Brad pulled a face**. **

**Still, if I'd expected any sort of joyful reunion ****-**** a hug or, God forbid, a kiss ****–**

"Don't you mean Andy forbid," Andy half joked.

"Not unless he wants to sleep on the couch," Helen glowered at her husband.

**I was in for a disappointment. He just stood there, staring at me like I'd grown two heads since the last time we'd bumped into each other.**

Brad struggled not to snigger at that. He didn't want his Mom to glare at him again; it was too scary for words.

**"Susannah," he breathed. "What are you doing here? Are you ****-**** you're not ****-?****"**

"No thank God," Helen said catching onto Jesse's meaning immediately.

**I caught his meaning at once and went, with a nervous laugh, "Dead? Me? No, no, no. No. I just, um, I came up here because I wanted to, um, you know, see if you were all right..."**

"I instantly believe you," Jake murmured dryly.

**Okay, could I be any lamer? I mean, seriously. I had pictured this moment in my head a thousand times since I'd first decided I was going to come after him, and in all my fantasies, no explanations were ever necessary. Jesse just threw his arms around me and started kissing me. On the lips.**

The boys tried not to groan and David bit back the urge to point out that back in the nineteenth century kissing had been reserved for engaged people or…well not very honourable people.

**This, though. This was way awkward. I wished I'd prepared a speech.**

**"Um," I said. What I really wished was that I could stop saying um . "See, the thing is, I wanted to make sure you were here because you wanted to be. Because if you don't want to be, well, Father Dom and I thought maybe it would be possible for you to come back. To, um, finish whatever it is, you know, that was keeping you down there. In my world, I mean. Our world," I corrected myself, quickly, remembering Father Dominic's warning. "Our world, I mean."**

"Okay…" Jake muttered as he exchanged an awkward look with Brad.

**Jesse continued to just stare at me.**

"Awkward," Brad mouthed to Jake who nodded in return.

**"Susannah," he said. His voice sounded weird. I figured out why a second later, when he asked, "Weren't you the one who sent me here?"**

"_WHAT?!"_ the entire Ackerman family squawked.

**I gaped at him. "What? What are you talking about?"**

**Now I knew what was so weird about his voice. It was filled with hurt. "Didn't you," he asked, "have me exorcised?"**

"Where the hell did he get that moronic idea from?" Helen fumed.

"Perhaps Maria made it look like Suze somehow," David proposed.

"Still! He should have had more trust in her!"

**"Me?" My own voice rocketed up about ten octaves. "Me? Jesse, of course not. I would never do that. I mean, you know I would never do something like that. That kid Jack did it. Your girlfriend Maria made him do it. She was trying to get rid of you. She told Jack you were bothering me, and he didn't know any better, so he exorcised you, and then Felix Diego threw me off the porch roof, and Jesse, they found your body, I mean your bones, and I saw them and I threw up all over the side of the house, and Spike really misses you and I was just thinking, you know, if you wanted to come back, you could, because that's why I've got this rope, so we can find our way back."**

"Oh God," Jake groaned quietly to himself as he cringed. Suze was digging herself a very big hole here.

**I was babbling. I have a tendency to do this even when I am not standing in purgatory. But I couldn't help myself. Everything was just kind of spilling out. Well, not everything. I mean, I totally wasn't going to tell him why I wanted him to come back. I wasn't going to mention the L word or anything. And not even because of Father D's warning, either.**

"The L word," Brad snorted to himself quietly.

**"That is," I went on, "if you want to come back. I could see why you'd want to stay here. I mean, after a hundred and fifty years and all, it's probably a relief. I imagine they'll be moving you along soon, and you'll be getting a new life, or going up to heaven, or whatever. But I was just thinking, you know, it wasn't fair of Maria to do what she did to you ****-**** twice ****-**** and that if you want to come back and figure out what it was you were, you know, doing down there on earth for so long, well, I'd just give you a hand, if I could."**

**I looked down at Father D's watch. It was easier than looking into Jesse's face, and seeing that he still wore that inscrutable expression, as if he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. And hearing.**

**"The only thing is," I said, "I can be separated from my body for half an hour before I wind up permanently detached, and we only have fifteen minutes left. So you have to hurry up and decide. What's it going to be?"**

Helen only managed to hide her disappointment over the lack of romance in her daughter's speech due to her overwhelming worry that her daughter won't make it back to her body in time (despite the fact her daughter was out on a date right now).

**Was that, I wondered, unfeminine enough for Father Dom? I was so totally not working it. No one could accuse me even of smiling . I was the picture of a professional mediator.**

"Yeah right," Brad muttered.

"The most unromantic mediator," Helen corrected quietly.

**Only I didn't know how long I was going to be able to maintain my businesslike persona. Especially when Jesse reached out, like he did just then, and laid a hand on my arm.**

Helen smiled a little at that.

**"Susannah," he said, and now his voice wasn't filled with hurt at all, but something that, if I wasn't mistaken, sounded a lot like anger. "Are you saying you died for me?"**

"Yes!" Helen half squealed as the Ackerman men growled overprotectively. Well David didn't but his speech about how Suze didn't technically die for Jesse got lost in the midst of noise.

**"Um," I said, wondering if it would count as using my feminine wiles if he was the one who touched me.**

"Oh bother," Brad rolled his eyes.

**"Well, not technically. Yet. But if we hang around here much longer -"**

**The hand on my arm tightened. "Let's go," he said.**

**I wasn't sure he really understood the situation. "Jesse," I said. "I can find my own way back, okay? I'm like this with the gatekeeper." I held up crossed fingers. **

Jake and Brad snorted at that. Well someone was a big fat liar, weren't they?

**"If you want to come with me because you want to go back, that's fine, but if you just want to walk me back to my hole, believe me, I can get there on my own."**

**Jesse just said, "Susannah. Shut up."**

"Thank you," Jake breathed. Someone needed to tell Suze that. Helen, however merely huffed at the lack of romance/

**And then, still keeping one hand on my arm, he grabbed the rope and started following it, back in the direction from which I'd come.**

**Oh, I thought as he propelled me along. Okay. Great. Now he's mad at me. Here I risk my life - because let's face it, that's what I was doing - and he's mad at me because of it. I actually should have thought of this. I mean, risking your life for a guy is practically like using the L word. Worse, even. **

"Eh?" Jake and Brad said.

"_How_?" David despaired. "Suze risks her life for _everyone._ It doesn't mean anything but the fact she is a noble and honourable soul!"

**How was I going to get out of this one?**

**I said, "Jesse, don't flatter yourself that I did this for you. I mean, it has been nothing but one giant pain in the neck, having you for a roommate. Do you think I like having to come home from school or from work or whatever and having to explain stuff like the Bay of Pigs to you? Believe me, life with you is no picnic."**

"Oh God," Andy moaned. He can see where this was heading and it wasn't pretty.

**He didn't say anything. He just kept pulling me along.**

**"Or what about Tad?" I said, bringing up what I knew was a sore subject. "I mean, you think I like having you tag along on my dates? Having you out of my life is going to make things a lot simpler, so don't think, you know, I did this for you. I only did it because that stupid cat of yours has been crying its head off. And also because anything I can do to make your stupid girlfriend mad, I will."**

The boys all groaned in embarrassment, Andy just shook his head, and Helen blushed on her daughter's behalf. For someone who was trying to convince a man that she didn't love him, Suze was doing a terrible job and it was embarrassing to hear it, never mind living it.

**"Nombre de Dios, Susannah," Jesse muttered. "Maria's not my girlfriend."**

**"Well, she certainly used to be," I said. "And what about that, anyway? That girl is a full-on skank, Jesse. I can't believe you ever agreed to marry her. I mean, what were you thinking, anyway? Couldn't you see what she was like underneath all that lace?"**

**"Things," Jesse said through gritted teeth, "were different back then, Susannah."**

**"Oh, yeah? So different that you couldn't tell the girl you were about to marry was a big old -"**

**"I hardly knew her," Jesse said, hauling me to a stop and glaring down at me. "All right?"**

**"Nice try," I said. "You two were cousins. Which is a whole other issue which, if you really want to know, completely grosses me- "**

"It was a different time!" David snapped. "And of course Jesse wouldn't have known her they would have been kept apart because of their genders as well as the distance between the two De Silva's ranches!"

**"Yes, we were cousins," Jesse interrupted, giving my arm a shake. "But like I said before, things were different back then, Susannah. If we had more time, I'd tell you- "**

**"Oh, no, you don't. We still have" - I looked down at Father D's watch - "twelve minutes left. You tell me now."**

"Grounded!" Helen barked out. "For deciding that this insignificant part of Jesse's past is more important than your life and wellbeing."

**"Susannah -"**

**"Now, Jesse, or I swear, I'm not budging."**

"For a month," Andy added furiously.

**He actually groaned in frustration, and said what I think must have been a very bad word, only I don't know for sure, since it was in Spanish. They don't teach us swears in Spanish at school.**

"And Suze was doing French, not Spanish," Brad muttered.

**"Fine," he said, dropping my arm. "You want to know? You want to know how it was back then? It was different, all right? California was different. Completely different. There was none of this mingling of the sexes. Boys and girls did not play together, did not sit side by side in classrooms. The only time I was ever in the same room with Maria was at meals, or sometimes dances. And then we were surrounded by other people. I doubt I ever heard her speak more than a few words-"**

**"Well, they were evidently pretty impressive ones, since you agreed to marry her."**

"It was an arranged marriage!" David cried out exasperated feeling the need to defend Jesse to the very end on this one.

**Jesse ran a hand through his hair and made another exclamation in Spanish. "Of course I agreed to marry her," he said. "My father wanted it, her father wanted it. How could I say no? I didn't want to say no. I didn't know - not then - what she was. It was only later, when I got her letters, that I realized -"**

**"That she can't spell?"**

"Susannah!" Helen hissed. "Now is not the time!"

**He ignored me. "- that the two of us had nothing in common, and never would. But even then, I would not have disgraced my family by breaking things off with her. Not for that."**

**"But when you heard she wasn't as pure as the driven snow?" I folded my arms across my chest and glared at him, sexist product of the nineteenth century that he was. **

"Oh come on! You didn't want him to marry her," Jake pointed out.

**"That's when you decided she wasn't good wife material?"**

**"When I heard rumors about Maria and Felix Diego," he said, impatiently, "I was unhappy. I knew Diego. He was not a good man. He was cruel and . . . Well, he was always looking for ways to make money. And Maria had a lot of money. He wanted to marry her -you can guess why - so when I found out, I decided it might be better to end it, yes -"**

**"But Diego got to know you first," I said, a throb in my voice.**

**"Susannah." He stared down at me. "I've had a century and a half to get used to being dead. It no longer matters to me who killed me, or why. What's important to me right now is seeing that you do not end up the same way. Now will you move, or do I have to carry you?"**

"CARRY HER!"

"Mom!" the three boys moaned clutching their ears.

**"Okay," I said, letting him pull me along again. "But I just want to get one thing straight. I did not do all this - you know, get myself exorcised and come up here and all - because I'm in love with you or anything like that."**

"Oh my God! Stop saying that! It makes you so obvious!"

**"I would not," he said grimly, "as you say, flatter myself."**

"Poor Jesse," Andy murmured. It must be hard to hear that even if it was obviously a lie.

**"Damn straight," I said. I wondered if I was still being unfeminine enough. Actually, I was beginning to think I was being a little too unfeminine. Hostile, actually, was what I was being.**

"I'm going to kill Father Dominic for this," Helen muttered darkly to herself.

**"Because I'm not. I came because of the cat. The cat really misses you."**

"You mean Suze really misses you," Jake rolled his eyes.

**"You shouldn't have come at all," Jesse said under his breath. Still, I heard him anyway. It wasn't like there was a whole lot of other noise up there. We had left the corridor - it had disappeared, I saw, the minute we turned our backs to it - and were back in the fog again, following the rope that, thankfully, Jack had remembered. "I cannot believe that Father Dominic allowed it."**

"He didn't."

**"Hey," I said. "Leave Father D out of it. This is all your fault, you know. None of this would have happened if you had just been open and honest with me from the beginning about how you died. Then I could have at least told Andy to dig else-where. And I'd have been prepared to deal with Maria and her bohunk husband. I don't know why they are so strung out about people finding out they're a couple of murderers, but they are very intent on keeping what happened to you a big old myst-"**

**"That," Jesse said, "is because to them, no time has passed since their deaths. They were at rest until it became evident that my body was about to be found, which would inevitably open up speculation as to the cause of my demise. They do not understand that more than a century has passed since then. They are trying to preserve their places in the community, as the leading citizens they once were."**

"What a pair of saddos," Brad said.

"Indeed," David agreed grimly.

**"Tell me about it," I said, fingering my bruise. "They think it's still eighteen fifty, and they're afraid of the neighbours finding out they offed you. Well, it's all going to blow up in their faces in a day or so. The truth is coming out, courtesy of the Carmel Pine Cone- "**

**Jesse spun me around to face him. He looked madder than ever. "Susannah," he said. "What are you talking about?"**

**"I told the whole story to Cee Cee," I explained, unable to keep a note of self-congratulation from creeping into my voice. "She's interning at the paper for the summer. She says they're running the story - the real story, about what happened to you - on Sunday."**

**Seeing his expression growing, if anything, even darker, I added, "Jesse, I had to. Maria killed the guy at the historical society - the one she stole your picture from in order to do the exorcism. I'm pretty sure she killed his grandfather, too. Maria and that husband of hers have killed everybody who has ever tried to tell the truth about what really happened to you that night. But she's not going to be able to do it anymore. That story is going to go out to thirty-five thousand people. More even, because they'll post it on the paper's website. Maria isn't going to be able to kill everybody who reads it."**

**Jesse shook his head. "No, Susannah. She'll just settle for killing you."**

Helen shuddered at that and Andy squeezed her arm comfortingly.

**"Jesse," I said. "She can't kill me. She's already tried. I've got news for you: I am really, really hard to kill."**

"Don't be arrogant!" Helen hissed.

**"Maybe not," Jesse said. He held something out in his hand. I looked down at it. To my surprise, I saw that it was the rope we'd been following.**

"Oh God no!" Helen moaned.

**Only instead of the end disappearing down into the hole through which I'd climbed, it sat, frayed, in Jesse's hand. As if it had been cut.**

The words came out choked and Helen struggled to get the final four words out.

**Cut with a knife.**

"Jake, read!" Andy ordered as he tore the book out of Helen's hands and chucked it into Jake's lap. "Quickly before your mother has a heart attack."


	16. Chapter 16

Jake began hastily.

**I stared down at the end of the rope in horror. It's funny. You know what the first thing that popped into my head was?**

"Shit?" Brad mumbled the suggestion.

**"But Father Dom said," I cried, "that Maria and Felix were good Catholics. So what are they doing down in that church?"**

"Father Dominic's word is not gospel truth," Andy grumbled.

**Jesse had a little more presence of mind than I did. He reached out and seized my wrist, twisting it so he could see the face of Father Dominic's watch.**

**"How much more time do you have?" he demanded. "How many more minutes?"**

**I swallowed. "Eight," I said. **

Helen fought back the urge to scream.

**"But the whole reason Father Dom blessed my house was so they wouldn't try to come in, and then look what they do. They come into a church ****-****"**

"She's worried about us at this moment where she might die?!" Helen shrieked. The Ackerman men said nothing but they were deeply touched at this.

**Jesse looked around. "We'll find the way out," he said. "Don't worry, Susannah. It has to be around here somewhere. We'll find it."**

**But we wouldn't. I knew that. There was no point, I knew, even in looking. What with the fog covering the ground so thickly, there was no chance we'd ever find the hole through which I'd climbed.**

Helen moaned and clutched at Andy's hand desperately.

**No. Susannah Simon, who'd been so hard to kill, was effectively dead already.**

"No," Helen moaned, "no."

**I started untying the rope from around my waist. If I was going to meet my maker, I at least wanted to look my best.**

"Susannah!" Helen snarled. "This is not the time to worry about how you look!"

**"It must be here," Jesse was saying as he waved at the fog, trying to part it in order to see beneath it. "Susannah, it must be."**

**I thought about Father Dominic. And Jack. Poor Jack. If that rope had been cut, it could only have been because something catastrophic had happened down in the church. Maria de Silva, that practicing Catholic Father D had been so convinced would never dare launch an attack on consecrated ground, had not been as frightened of offending the Lord as Father Dominic had assumed she'd be. I hoped he and Jack were all right. Her problem was with me, not them.**

"Jeeze," Brad said disgusted. How could anyone attack an eight year old and a zillion year old priest? They must be the worst sort of ghost to do that.

**"Susannah." Jesse was peering down at me. "Susannah, why aren't you looking? You cannot give up, Susannah. We'll find it. I know we'll find it."**

**I just looked at him. I wasn't even seeing him, really. I was thinking about my mother. How was Father Dominic going to explain it? I mean, if he wasn't already dead himself. My mom was going to be really, really suspicious if my body was found in the basilica. I mean, I wouldn't even go to church on Sunday. Why would I be there on a Friday night?**

Helen moaned at the thought as she could not help but agree with her daughter. With Suze dressed up like she was and dead in the place she could have died, Helen would have launched a campaign at Father Dominic, the nuns, and the Monsignor accusing them all of doing _something._

**"Susannah!" Jesse had reached out and seized me by both my shoulders. Now he gave me a shake with enough force to send my hair flying into my face. "Susannah, are you listening to me? We only have five more minutes. We've got to find a way out. Call him."**

"Call who?" Brad asked.

**I blinked up at him, confusedly pushing my long dark hair from my eyes. That was one thing, anyway. I'd never have to worry about finding the perfect shade to cover my gray. I'd never turn gray now.**

"You will turn grey and die at an old age or so help me god I will bring you back from the dead just to kill you myself," Helen threatened the book.

**"Call who?" I asked dazedly.**

Brad looked mildly horrified to have said the same thing as Suze.

**"The gatekeeper," Jesse said through gritted teeth. "You said he was your friend. Maybe he'll show us the way."**

**I looked into Jesse's eyes. I saw something in them I'd never seen before. I realized, in a rush, what that something was.**

**Fear. Jesse was afraid.**

"He's not the only one," Andy murmured as he rubbed his wife's back comfortingly.

**And suddenly I was afraid, too. Before I'd just been shocked. Now I was scared. Because if Jesse was afraid, well, that meant something really, really bad was about to happen. Because Jesse does not scare easily.**

Helen whimpered slightly and held onto Andy harder while David sought the comfort of a cushion and Brad felt a really uncomfortable urge to hug someone.

**"Call him," Jesse said, again.**

**I tore my gaze from his and looked around. Everywhere ****-**** everywhere I looked ****-**** I saw only fog, night sky, and more fog. No gatekeeper. No hole back to the Junipero Serra Mission church. No hallway filled with doors. Nothing.**

Everyone shuddered at that.

**And then, suddenly, there was something. A figure, striding toward us. I was filled with relief. The gatekeeper, at last. He would help me. I knew he would...**

"Please help her," Helen begged the book quietly.

**Except that, as he came closer, I saw it wasn't the gatekeeper at all. This guy didn't have anything on his head except hair. Curly brown hair. Just like ****-**

**"Paul?" I burst out incredulously.**

"_WHAT?_!"

**I couldn't believe it. Paul. Paul Slater. Paul Slater was coming toward us. But how ****-**

"Yes, how?"

"I knew it!" David said smugly. "There was no way it was a coincidence for Maria and Paul to have said the same thing."

"It is a likely coincidence the saying was an old one," Andy pointed out/

**"Suze," he said conversationally as he strolled up. His hands were in the pockets of his chinos, and his Brooks Brothers shirt was untucked. He looked as if he had just breezed in from a long day on the golf course.**

"In that creepy place?" Brad snorted. "I knew he was a creep."

**Paul Slater. Paul Slater .**

"I wish," Brad muttered.

**"I was about to ask you the same question," Paul said. He looked at Jesse, who was still clutching my shoulders. "Who's your friend? He is a friend, I assume."**

"It's none of your business whether Jesse is a friend or not," Helen half snarled. She didn't like Paul at all now.

**"I ****-****" I glanced from Jesse to Paul and then back again. "I came up here to get him," I explained. "He's my friend. My friend Jesse. Jack accidentally exorcised him, and ****-****"**

**"Ah," Paul said, rolling back and forth on his heels. "Yes. I told you that you should have left well enough alone with Jack. He'll never be one of us, you know."**

"That little-"

The things Andy then said about Paul was so unspeakable that it left his sons gaping at him in horror. Never in their lives had they heard their father speak like that and never had they imagined he would. His description, however, was entirely accurate about the dick.

**I just stared at him. I could not figure out what was happening. Paul Slater, here? It didn't make any sense. Not unless he was dead. "One of ... what?"**

**"One of us," Paul repeated. "I told you, Suze. All this do-gooding, mediator nonsense. I can't believe you fell for it."**

"Excuse me, young man," Helen fumed "there is no nonsense in helping a person though it is a hopelessly dangerous task when she's helping murder victims."

**He shook his head, chuckling a little. "I would have thought you were smarter than that. I mean, the old man, I can understand. He's from a completely different world ****-**** a different generation. And Jack, of course, is ... well, clearly unsuited for this sort of thing. But you, Suze. I'd have expected more from you."**

"More of what? Lack of compassion?" David demanded to know.

**Jesse let go of my shoulders but kept one hand firmly around one of my wrists ... the wrist with Father Dominic's watch on it. "This," he said, "is not the gatekeeper, I take it."**

"Unlike Jesse to be slow," Jake raised an eyebrow.

**"No," I said. "This is Jack's brother, Paul. Paul?" I looked at him. "How did you get here? Are you dead?"**

"Wow…Suze is slow."

"Be nice Brad," Andy chided, "she's in shock."

**Paul rolled his eyes. "No. Please. And you didn't need to go through all that rigmarole to get here, either. You can, like me, come and go from here when you please, Suze. You've just been spending so much time 'helping'" - he made quotation marks in the air with his fingers ****-**** "lost souls like that one" ****-**** he nodded his head in Jesse's direction ****-**** "you've never had a chance to concentrate on discovering your real potential."**

"There's nothing wrong with helping people!" David snapped.

**I stared at him. "You told me . . . you told me you don't believe in ghosts."**

"He's a liar as well as a creep," Jake said, "go figure."

**He smiled like a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar. "I should have been more specific," he said. "I don't believe in letting them walk all over me, like you clearly seem to." His gaze roved over Jesse contemptuously.**

"Well someone is jealous," Helen said smug with satisfaction. Her daughter picked the right man.

"Please, if anything Suze walks all over Jesse not the other way round," Brad snorted dismissively.

**I was still having trouble processing what I was seeing ... and hearing.**

"Oh just punch him and it over and done with."

"DAD!"

**"But . . . but isn't that what mediators are supposed to do?" I stammered. "Help lost souls?"**

**Paul heaved a shudder, as if the fog swirling around us had suddenly grown colder. "Hardly," he said. "Well, maybe the old man. And the boy. But not me. And certainly not you, Susannah. And if you'd bothered giving me the time of day, instead of being so caught up trying to rescue this one" - he sneered in Jesse's direction - "I might have been able to show you precisely what you're capable of. Which is so much more than you can begin to imagine."**

"Don't let him near you, he obviously means sexual harassment," Andy said revolted.

"Jealous petty, child," Helen hissed at the book.

**A glance at Jesse told me that I had better cut this little conversation short if I didn't want any bloodshed. I could see a muscle I'd never noticed before leaping in Jesse's jaw.**

"Kill him," Jake encouraged Jesse.

**"Paul," I said. "I want you to know that it really means a lot to me, the fact that you, apparently, have your finger on the pulse of the mystical world. But right now, if I don't get back to earth, I'm going to wake up dead. Not to mention the fact that if I'm not mistaken, your little brother might be having a really hard time down there with a guy named Diego and a chick in a hoop skirt."**

**Paul nodded. "Yes," he said. "Thanks to you and your refusal to acknowledge your true calling, Jack's life is in danger, as is, incidentally, the priest's."**

"Excuse me?" Andy shouted. "How on earth is it Suze's fault that you and your parents are so neglectful that Jack was able to sneak out of the hotel?!"

**Jesse made a sudden motion toward Paul, which I cut short by holding up a restraining hand.**

**"How about giving us some help then, huh, Paul, if you know so much?" I asked. It was no joke, holding Jesse back. He seemed ready to tear the guy's head off. "How do we get out of here?"**

"Just let him go," David mumbled.

**Paul shrugged. "Oh, is that all you want to know?" he asked. "That's easy. Just go into the light."**

"Fucking bastard!" Brad hissed.

**"Go into the - "I broke off, furious. "Paul!"**

**He chuckled. "Sorry," he said. "I just wanted to know if you'd seen the movie."**

"Your brother's life is in danger and you make jokes!"

**But he wasn't chuckling a bit a split second later when Jesse suddenly launched himself at him.**

The family cheered.

**I'm serious. It was way WWF. One minute Paul was standing there, smirking, and the next, Jesse's fist was sinking into his tanned, handsome face.**

The boys cheered him on even louder.

**Well, I'd tried to stop him. Paul was, after all, probably my only way out of there. **

Everyone groaned at the reminder – why couldn't Paul have been a normal creep instead of a supernatural creep?

**But I can't say I really minded when I heard the sound of nasal cartilage tearing.**

The boys cheered up at the sound of that, Jake, especially, was very gleeful.

**Paul was pretty much a baby about the whole thing. He started cursing and saying stuff like, "You broke my nose! I can't believe you broke my nose!"**

Jake and Brad rolled their eyes, how _pathetic_, while David merely wished Jesse broke more than Paul's nose.

**"I'll break more than your nose," Jesse declared, clutching Paul by his shirt collar and waving his blood-smeared fist in front of his eyes, "if you don't tell us how to get out of here now."**

Andy grinned despite his wife almost swooning over Jesse while the boys all exchanged high fives. Jesse was awesome.

**How Paul might have responded to this interesting threat I never did find out. That's because I heard a sweetly familiar voice call my name. I turned around, and there, running toward me through the mist, was Jack.**

"Oh no," Helen moaned, "don't tell me the child is dead too."

"I doubt it," David attempted to reassure his stepmother, "I think he either exorcised his soul or simply climbed through the hole himself."

**Around his waist was a rope.**

Helen sighed in relief.

**"Suze," he called. "Come quick! That mean lady ghost you warned me about, she cut your rope, and now she and that other one are beating up Father Dominic!" Then he stopped running, took in the sight of Jesse still clutching a bloody-faced Paul, and said, curiously, "Paul? What are you doing here?"**

"Poor kid," Andy murmured.

**A moment passed. A heartbeat, really - if I'd had one, which, of course, I didn't. No one moved. No one breathed. No one bunked.**

**Then Paul looked up at Jesse and said, "You'll regret this. Do you understand? I'll make you sorry."**

"Oh grow up," Helen said disgustedly.

"Pathetic douche," Brad sneered.

**Jesse just laughed, without the slightest trace of humor, and said, "You're welcome to try."**

**Then he tossed Paul aside as if he were a used tissue, strode forward, seized my wrist, and dragged me toward Jack.**

"Jesse is so cool," David breathed admiringly while his older brothers just smirked/.

**"Take us to them," he said to the little boy.**

**And Jack, slipping his hand into mine, **

"Aw," Helen cooed.

**Did so, without looking back at his brother. Not even once.**

"Poor kid."

"Yeah poor bugger must be embarrassed to have a creep like that as a brother."

"I have a feeling Jack already knew or suspected," David frowned, "he was trying to eavesdrop on their conversations remember? I have a theory that Paul had tormented Jack over or with their powers and Jack might have feared he would do the same to Suze."

"I hope you're wrong," Andy shuddered, "I would hate to think of a child suffering like that."

**Which told me, I realized, just about everything - except what I really wanted to know:**

**Just who - or, more aptly, what - was Paul Slater?**

"A psychopathic, lying, blackmailing, creepy, pushy, nasty, pathetic and petty jerk," Brad summarised cleverly.

**But I didn't have time to stay and find out. Father Dominic's watch gave me a minute to return to my body, or be placed in the difficult position of not having one ... which was going to make starting the eleventh grade in the fall a real problem.**

**Fortunately, the hole was not far from where we'd been standing. When we got to it and I looked down, I couldn't see Father Dominic anywhere. I could hear the sounds of a struggle, **

"Oh no!" Helen gasped. "I hope Father Dominic didn't injured."

**And I could see my body, stretched out beneath me as if I were sleeping, and sleeping so deeply I wasn't stirring at the sound of all that racket. Not a twitch.**

Helen shuddered at that while Andy flinched at the very idea.

**Somehow, it seemed a much longer way down than it had climbing up.**

**I turned to look at Jack. "You should go first," I said.**

"Good," Andy said satisfied with the knowledge his stepdaughter put her charge's safety before all, "I'm proud of her."

"As am I," Helen said.

**"We'll lower you with the rope -"**

**But both he and Jesse shouted, "No!" at the same time.**

**And the next thing I knew, I was falling.**

"NO!" Helen shrieked/

**Really. Down and down I tumbled, and while I couldn't see much as I fell, I could see what I was about to land on, and let me tell you, I did not relish crushing my own ...**

Everyone shivered or flinched at the very idea of it all.

**But I didn't. Just like in dreams I've had where I've been falling, I opened my eyes at the moment of impact, and found myself blinking up at Jesse's and Jack's faces, peering down at me over the rim of the hole Father Dom had created with his chanting.**

"Oh thank God," Helen gasped as she clutched her chest tightly. She thought she was about to have a heart attack just then.

**I was inside myself again. And I was in one piece. I could tell as I reached down to make sure my legs were still there. They were. Everything was functional. Even the bruise on my head hurt again.**

**And when, a second later, a statue of the Virgin Mary - the one Adam had told me had wept blood - landed across my stomach, well, that really hurt, too.**

Everyone winced at that.

**"There she is," Maria de Silva cried. "Get her!"**

"Oh God!" Helen moaned fretfully.

**I have to tell you, I am getting really tired of people - particularly dead people - trying to kill me. Paul is right: I am a do-gooder. I do nothing but try to help people, and what do I get for my efforts? Virgin Mary statues in the midriff. It isn't fair.**

"Life isn't," Andy said bitterly.

**To show just how unfair I thought it all was, I heaved the statue off me, scrambled to my feet, and grabbed Maria by the back of her skirt. Apparently, recalling her last incident with me, she decided to make a run for it. **

"Idiot," Brad muttered. He learnt from previous experience that trying to run from Suze was, perhaps, the worst thing you can do.

**Too late, though.**

**"You know, Maria," I said conversationally as I reeled her in by her flounces, the way a fisherman reels in a really big trout. "Girls like you really irritate me. I mean, it's not just that you get guys to do your dirty work for you, instead of doing it yourself. **

Helen gritted her teeth at that. She hated girls who had to have someone do their work for them with a deadly passion.

**It's this whole I'm-so-much-better-than-you-because-I'm-a-de-Silva thing that really bugs me. Because this is America." I reached out and grabbed a fistful of her glossy black curls. "And in America, we're all created equal, whether our last name is de Silva or Simon."**

"Well that's the whole idea," David muttered to himself, "whether it is actually practised is an entirely different matter."

**"Yes?" Maria cried, lashing out with her knife. She'd apparently gotten it back. "Well, do you want to know what irritates me about you? You think that just because you are a mediator, you are better than me."**

Brad snorted, Helen smile was so twisted it looked like a grimace, and Jake laughed darkly at that.

**I have to tell you, that one cracked me up.**

**"Now that's not true," I said, ducking as she took a swipe at me with her blade. "I don't think I'm better than you because I'm a mediator, Maria. I think I'm better than you because I do not go around agreeing to marry guys I'm not in love with."**

"Had have an ounce of compassion," Andy added.

"And intelligence," David contributed to the list.

"And the courage, independence and dignity to do things yourself," Helen finished.

**In a flash, I had her arm pinned behind her waist again. The knife fell to the floor with a clatter. "And even if I did," I went on, "I wouldn't have them murdered just so I could marry somebody else. Because" - keeping a firm grip on her hair with my other hand, I steered her toward the altar rail - "I believe the key to a successful relationship is communication. If you had simply communicated with Jesse better, none of this would be happening now. I mean, that's your real problem right there, Maria. Communication goes two ways. Somebody has to talk. And somebody has to listen."**

"Suze should take her own advice," Helen grumbled.

**Seeing what I was about to do, Maria shrieked, "Diego!"**

**But it was too late. I had already rammed her face, hard, into the altar rail.**

The boys cheered again.

**"The thing is," I explained as I pulled her head back from the rail to examine the extent of the damage, "You won't listen, either, will you? I mean, I told you not to mess with me. And" - I leaned forward to whisper her in her ear - "I think I specified that you not mess with my boyfriend, either. But did you listen? No . . . you . . . did ... not."**

Helen couldn't help but do a little jig at that. Jesse de Silva, her daughter's boyfriend, her future son in law…she was making wedding plans already.

**I accompanied each of those last four words with a blow to Maria's face. Cruel, I know, but let's face it: she totally deserved it. The bitch had tried to kill me, not once, but twice.**

"And for that I am willing to ignore the foul language and violence," Andy said.

**Not that I'm counting or anything.**

"Yeah right," Jake snorted.

**Here's the thing about chicks who were brought up in the nineteenth century: they're sneaky. I'll give them that. They have the whole back-stabbing, attacking people while they're asleep thing down pretty pat.**

**But as far as actual hand-to-hand combat goes? Yeah, not so good at that. I broke her neck pretty easily just by stomping on it. In Prada slides, too!**

Everyone grimaced at that but not a single ounce of sympathy came into it for Maria.

**It was a shame her neck wouldn't stay broken for long.**

"Pity," Brad agreed/

**But while I had her nicely subdued, I looked around to see if Jack had made it down okay...**

"Good girl," Andy murmured approvingly. Helen smiled happily at that, she can foresee her daughter will be a fantastic mother one day – to Jesse's children of course.

**And the news was not good. Oh, Jack was fine. It was just that he was hunched over Father Dominic, who was far from it. He was lying in a crumpled heap to one side of the altar, looking way worse for wear. I climbed over the altar rail and went to him.**

**"Oh, Suze," Jack wailed. "I can't wake him up! I think he's -"**

"No he's not!" David jumped in panicked. "He's still alive today!"

**But even as he was speaking, Father Dom, his bifocals askew on his face, let out a moan.**

David breathed a sigh of relief.

**"Father D?" I lifted his head and set it down gently in my lap. "Father D, it's me, Suze. Can you hear me?"**

**Father D just moaned some more. But his eyelids fluttered, which I knew was a good sign.**

Helen hated the fact that her daughter knew this out of experience and not because of a first aid course.

**"Jack," I said. "Run over there to that gold box beneath the crucifix - see it? - and pull out the decanter of wine you'll find there."**

The boys couldn't help but snigger a little at that – Suze used the holy wine that represented Jesus' blood to wake up Father Dominic? Oh if only Sister Ernestine could have seen it, and they had a camera to take a photo of her face.

**Jack hurried to do as I had asked. I put my face close to Father Dominic's and whispered, "You'll be okay. Hang on, Father D. Keep it together."**

**A very loud splintering crash distracted me, and I glanced around the rest of the church with a sudden sinking feeling. Diego. He was here somewhere, I'd forgotten all about him -**

"_HOW?!_"

**But Jesse hadn't.**

**I don't know why, but I had simply assumed that Jesse had stayed up there in that creepy shadowland. He hadn't. He had slipped back into this world - the real world - without, apparently, much thought as to what he might be giving up in doing so.**

"He didn't need to give it a single thought, the love of his life is in danger!" Helen cried out ecstatically.

"That and I bet he wanted vengeance," the unromantic David pointed out.

**On the other hand, down here he was getting to beat the crap out of the guy who killed him, so maybe he wasn't giving up all that much. In fact, he looked pretty intent on returning the favor - you know, killing the guy who'd killed him - except, of course, that he couldn't, since Diego was already dead.**

"Bet it was still bloody satisfying," Jake muttered.

**Still, I had never seen anybody go after someone with such single-minded purpose. Jesse, I was convinced, wasn't going to be satisfied merely with breaking Felix Diego's neck. No, I think he wanted to rip off the guy's head.**

"Good," David said savagely.

**And he was doing a pretty job of it, too. Diego was bigger than Jesse, but he was also older, and not as quick on his feet. Plus, I think Jesse just plain wanted it more. To see his opponent decapitated, I mean. At least, if the energy with which he was swinging a jagged-edged piece of pew at Felix Diego's head was any indication.**

**"Here," Jack said breathlessly as he brought the wine, in its crystal decanter, to me.**

**"Good," I said. It wasn't whisky - isn't that what you're supposed to give unconscious people to rouse them? - But it had alcohol in it.**

David's eye twitched a little but he decided to fight the urge to lecture on the appropriate first aid since no one was in the mood to listen to it while Suze was still in potential danger.

**"Father D," I said, raising his head and putting the un-stoppered decanter to his lips. "Drink some of this."**

**Only it didn't work. Wine just dribbled down his chin and dripped onto his chest.**

Brad couldn't help but snort at that. He was, of course, glared at for it.

**Meanwhile, Maria had begun to moan. Her broken neck was snapping back into place already. That's the thing about ghosts. They bounce back, and way too fast.**

**Jack glared at her as she tried to raise herself to her knees.**

**"Too bad we can't exorcise her ," he said, darkly.**

"Why can't you?" David frowned. "You had no problem exorcising Jesse."

**I looked at him. "Why can't we?" I asked.**

**Jack raised his eyebrows. "I don't know. We don't have the chicken blood anymore."**

Andy choked on his laughter while Brad snickered, Jake snorted a laugh, David giggled, and Helen sighed exasperated/

**"We don't need the chicken blood," I said. "We have that." I nodded toward the circle of candles. Miraculously, in spite of all the fighting going on, they had remained standing.**

"God must exist and is on their side then," Andy mumbled. Little miracles were always the best and most useful after all.

**"But we don't have a picture of her," Jack said. "Don't we need a picture of her?"**

"Probably not if she's already there," David pondered on the science of exorcism.

**"Not," I said, gently putting Father D's head back on the floor, "if we don't have to summon her. And we don't. She's right here. Come on and help me move her."**

**Jack took her feet. I took her torso. She moaned and fought us the whole way, but when we laid her on the choir robes, she must have felt as I did - that it was pretty darn comfortable - since she stopped struggling and just lay there. Above her head, the circle Father Dom had opened remained open, smoke - or fog, as I knew it was now - curling down from its outer edges in misty tendrils.**

**"How do we make it suck her in?" Jack wanted to know.**

**"I don't know." I glanced at Jesse and Diego. They were still engaged in what appeared to be mortal combat. If I had thought Jesse had lost the upper hand, I'd have gone over and helped, but it appeared he was doing fine.**

**Besides, the guy had killed him. I figured it was payback time, and for that, Jesse did not need my help.**

**"The book!" I said, brightening. "Father Dom read from a book. Look around. Do you see it?"**

**Jack found the small, black, leather-bound volume beneath the first pew. When he flipped through the pages, however, his face fell.**

**"Suze," he said. "It's not even in English."**

**"That's okay," I said, and I took it from him and turned to the page Father Dominic had marked. "Here it is."**

**And I began to read.**

"Does Suze even know Latin?"

"No but I'm also pretty sure she doesn't know Portuguese, so I think she's all right on this one."

**I'm not going to pretend I know Latin. I don't. I hadn't the slightest idea what I was saying.**

**But I guess pronunciation doesn't count when you are summoning the forces of darkness, since, as I spoke, those misty tendrils began to grow longer and longer, until finally they spilled out onto the floor and began to curl around Maria's limbs.**

**She didn't even seem to mind, either. It was like she was enjoying the way they felt around her wrists and ankles.**

"Ew!" Brad yelped. "I didn't need to know about the crazy chick's fetishes."

"Bradley!"

**Well, the chick was kind of dominatrixy, if you asked me.**

"Susannah!"

**She didn't even struggle when, as I read further, the slack on the smoky tendrils tightened, and slowly, the fog began elevating her off the floor.**

**"Hey," Jack said in an indignant voice. "How come it didn't do that for you? How come you had to climb into the hole?"**

"Probably because she _wasn't actually dead_."

**I was afraid to reply, however. Who knew what would happen if I stopped reading?**

**So I kept on. And Maria soared higher and higher, until ...**

**With a strangled cry, Diego broke away from Jesse and came racing toward us.**

"Oh no!" Helen gasped horrified.

**"You bitch!" he bellowed at me as he stared in horror at his wife's body, dangling in the air above us. "Bring her down!"**

**Jesse, panting, his shirt torn down the middle and a thin ribbon of blood running down the side of his face from a cut in his forehead, came up behind Diego and said, "You want your wife so badly, then why don't you go to her?"**

**And he shoved Felix Diego into the center of the ring of candles.**

The boys cheered again.

**A second later, tendrils of smoke shot down to curl around him, too.**

**Diego didn't take his exorcism as quietly as his wife. He did not appear to be enjoying himself one bit. He kicked and screamed and said quite a lot of stuff in Spanish that I didn't understand, but which Jesse surely did.**

"I hope the pair of them burn in hell," Brad muttered darkly. He will never forgive them for the bug's incident. Or trying to kill his little sister. Or for killing Jesse who was an all right guy.

**Still, Jesse's expression did not change, not even once. Every so often I looked up from what I was reading and checked. He watched the two lovers' - the one who had killed him and the one who had ordered his death - disappear into the same hole we'd just climbed from.**

**Until finally, after I'd uttered a last "Amen," they disappeared.**

The boys couldn't help but shudder at the thought of Suze saying 'amen' it didn't sound right at all. It defied all they knew about their world. It was too weird for comfort.

**When the last echo of Diego's vengeful cries died away, silence filled the church. It was so pervasive a silence, it was actually a little overwhelming. I myself was reluctant to break it. But I felt like I had to.**

**"Jesse," I said, softly.**

**But not softly enough. My whisper, in the stillness of the church, after all that violence, sounded like a scream.**

"Urgh," Helen grimaced.

**Jesse tore his gaze from the hole through which Maria and Diego had disappeared and looked at me questioningly.**

**I nodded toward the hole. "If you want to go back," I said, though each word tasted, I was sure, like those beetles Dopey had accidentally poured into his mouth, "now is the time, before it closes up again."**

"Like hell he will," Jake snorted.

"Language!" Andy chided now fully back to his normal self.

**Jesse looked up at the hole, and then at me, and then back at the hole.**

**And then back at me.**

**"No, thank you, querida ," he said, casually. "I think I want to stay and see how it all ends."**

"Awwww!" Helen cooed. "How romantic!"

"And that's the end of the entry," Jake said.

"Wait, wait just a mo," Brad shouted, "if that's what happened after we found Jesse's body, and this is the end of Suze getting him back, how the effing hell did he, you know, come back from the dead?"

Everyone exchanged a look as they realised the biggest question they had was still unanswered. In fact it befuddled Andy so much that he forgot to scold Brad for his language again. Jake tore his eyes off his family first and shoved the book into Brad's chest. "Read quickly," he demanded.


	17. Chapter 17

_Author's Note: Thank you so much for the favourites, alerts, and reviews. Thank you for your patience as the last few chapters took far too much time than they should. The next book will be out later but right now I want to focus on my other fanfics since I haven't updated Austen House in two months. Please review one last time and I hope you enjoy this final chapter. _

**How it all ended that day was with Jack and Jesse and me helping Father Dominic, when he finally came around, to a phone, so that he could call the police and report that he'd stumbled across a pair of thieves looting the place.**

**A lie, yes. But how else was he going to explain all the damage Maria and Diego had done? Not to mention the bump on his noggin.**

**Then, once we were sure the police and an ambulance were on their way, Jesse and I left Father Dominic and waited with Jack for the cab we'd called, carefully not talking about the one thing I'm pretty sure we were all thinking: Paul.**

"I don't wanna think about that jerk!" Brad whined.

"I don't want Suze to think about that jerk," Jake muttered darkly.

**Not that I didn't try to get Jack to tell me what was up with his brother and all. **

"Suze!" Andy cried out horrified. "You don't dare pester that poor kid after everything he has been through."

**Basically, the conversation went like this:**

**Me: "So, Jack. What is up with your brother?"**

"Subtle," Jake snorted.

**Jack: (scowling) "I don't want to talk about it."**

**Me: "I can fully appreciate that. However, he appears to be able to move freely between the realms of the living and the dead, and I find this alarming. Do you think it is possible that he is the son of Satan?"**

The boys sniggered at that.

"Susannah!" Helen hissed. "Jack said he didn't want to talk about it!"

**Jesse: "Susannah."**

**Me: "I mean that in the nicest possible way."**

"I bet she did," Jake smirked.

"Yeah right," Brad snickered.

**Jack: "I said I don't want to talk about it."**

**Me: "Which is perfectly understandable. But did you know before now that Paul is a mediator, too? Or were you as surprised as we were? Because you didn't seem very surprised when you ran into him, you know, up there."**

"Susannah Simon you leave that poor boy alone or so help me God-"

"She has a point," Andy interrupted, "I fear that Paul might have used their mutual powers to scare Jack."

"That…I can't even think of the right word for him," Jake growled. Teasing your brother is one thing but tormenting them into a frightened wreak? Well that was just psychotic.

**Jack: "I really don't want to talk about this right now."**

**Jesse: "He doesn't want to talk about it, Susannah. Leave the boy alone."**

"Listen to Jesse," Helen said firmly.

**Which was easy for Jesse to say. Jesse didn't know what I did. Which was that Paul and Maria and Diego . . . they had all been in cahoots. It had taken me a while to realize it, but now that I had, I could have kicked myself for not seeing it before: Paul's keeping me occupied at Friday's while Maria had Jack perform the exorcism on Jesse. Paul's remark ****-**** "It's easier to catch flies with honey than with vinegar." Hadn't Maria said the exact same thing to me, not a few hours later?**

David scowled darkly at the book. He had sincerely hoped he was wrong but of course once again he was right.

**The three of them ****-**** Paul, Maria, and Diego ****-**** had formed an unholy trinity, bound, apparently by a common hatred of one person: Jesse.**

"I don't understand that."

"Why?" Jake teased. "Your little brain incapable of computing such a conspiracy?"

"No," Brad snarled, "I meant that I don't understand what Paul had against Jesse. He didn't even know that the guy existed until very recently."

"Jealousy," Helen said grimly, "it would have been jealousy and resentment over the fact that Suze refused to date him."

"What a swell guy," Andy muttered sarcastically.

**But what possible reason could Paul, who'd never even met Jesse until that moment in purgatory, have to hate him? Now, of course, his dislike was understandable: Jesse had done him a very great bodily injury, something for which Paul has sworn to repay him next time he saw him. **

"One would hope that that would be never," David mumbled.

**I'm sure Jesse wasn't taking it too seriously, but I was worried. I mean, I'd just gone to a lot of trouble to get Jesse out of one sticky situation. I wasn't too enthused about seeing him plunge straight into another one.**

**But it was no good. Jack wouldn't talk. The kid was traumatized. Well, sort of. He actually seemed like he'd had a pretty good time. He just didn't want to talk about his brother.**

"I think it's safe to say the poor kid is traumatised."

**Which bummed me out. Because I had a lot of questions. For instance, if Paul was a mediator ****- ****and he had to be; how else could he have been walking around up there? ****-**** why hadn't he helped his little brother out with the whole I see dead people thing, said a few words of encouragement, assured the poor kid he wasn't crazy?**

"Because he is a selfish, spoilt, psychopathic creep and that's just the surface."

**But if I'd hoped to get any answers out of Jack on that account, I was sadly disappointed.**

**I guess if I'd had a brother like Paul, I probably wouldn't have wanted to talk about it, either.**

"Exactly! So leave the poor kid alone!"

**Once Jack had been safely dropped off at the hotel, Jesse and I began the long walk home (I didn't have enough money on me for a ride from the hotel back to my house).**

"I'm proud that she put Jack ahead of her needs once more," Andy beamed.

**You might wonder what we talked about during that two-mile trek. A lot, surely, might have been discussed.**

"I bet," Jake muttered.

**And yet, to tell you the truth, I can't remember. I don't think we really talked about anything important. What was there to say, really?**

**I snuck in as successfully as I'd snuck out. No one woke up, except the dog, and once he saw it was me, he went right back to sleep.**

"We need a better guard dog," Andy grumbled.

**No one had noticed that I'd been gone.**

**No one ever does.**

"That's not true!" Helen exclaimed. She didn't like how that sounded at all. As if Suze thought that they could all live without her in their lives.

**Spike was the only one besides me who'd noticed Jesse was gone, and his joy at seeing him again was an embarrassment to felines everywhere. I could hear the stupid cat purring all the way across the room...**

"Awwww," Helen cooed, "how sweet."

Brad grimaced he still thought that cat was a monster out to get him.

**Although I didn't listen for long. That's because what happened was, I walked in, pulled down the bedclothes, slipped off my slides, and climbed into bed. I didn't even wash my face. I climbed into bed, looked one last time at Jesse as if to reassure myself he was really back, and then I went to sleep.**

**And I stayed asleep until Sunday.**

"I wish I could do that," Jake said dreamily.

**My mother became convinced I was coming down with mono. **

"I was so worried," Helen murmured. "I thought she had died or something."

**At least until she saw the bruise on my forehead. Then she decided I was suffering from an aneurysm. Much as I tried to convince her that neither of these things was true ****-**** that I was just really, really tired ****-**** she didn't believe me, and would, I'm convinced, have dragged me to the hospital Sunday morning for an MRI ****-**** hey, I had been asleep for almost two days ****-**** except that she and Andy had to drive up to Doc's camp to bring him home.**

"You could have taken Suze to the hospital and Dad just pick me up," David pointed out.

Helen smiled sheepishly. "She had me half convinced nothing was wrong and I could pick you up."

"So why did we still go to the hospital?" Andy asked remembering the long wait that resulted into nothing and had been an exhausting waste of time.

"I was punishing her for lying, I didn't know what she was lying about but I knew she was."

The boys exchanged horrified looks as Andy chortled. Parents are evil! Evil I tell you!

**The thing is, I guess dying ****-**** even for just half an hour ****-**** can be very exhausting.**

Everyone shuddered at that reminder.

**I woke ravenous with hunger. After my mom and Andy left ****-**** having extracted from me a promise that I would not leave the house all day, but would instead wait meekly for them to return, so that they could reassess my state of health at that time ****-**** I downed two bagels and a bowl of Special K before Sleepy and Dopey even showed up at the table, looking all tussle-headed and unkempt. I, on the other hand, had already showered and dressed, and was ready to face the day ... or at least unemployment, since I wasn't certain the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort was going to extend my contract with them, due to my having missed two days of work in a row.**

"Oh please," Jake snorted, "they never fire anyone unless they did something to ruin their reputation. Being off sick for two days isn't going to get you fired."

**Sleepy, however, reassured me on that account.**

**"Naw, it's cool," he said as he shovelled Cheerios into his mouth. "I talked to Caitlin. I told her you were going through, you know, a thing. On account of the dead dude in the backyard. She was okay with it."**

"Was this before or after you dumped her?" Andy eyed his eldest suspiciously.

"Caitlin doesn't have the power to fire Suze anymore since she now lives in San Francesco and plans to get a job there," Jake rolled his eyes. "She was only summer staff like the rest of us."

**"Really?" I wasn't actually listening to Sleepy. Instead, I was watching Dopey eat, always an awe-inspiring sight. He stuffed one entire half of a bagel into his mouth and seemed to swallow it whole.**

Helen turned a pale shade of green while Andy looked at his middle son in disgust. Unfortunately it did nothing to dampen the self-congratulating grin on Brad's face.

**I wished I had a camera so I could record the event for posterity. Or at least prove to the next girl who declared my stepbrother a babe how wrong she was.**

Brad scowled, Jake smirked, David giggled slightly, and Andy supressed a smile at that.

**I watched as, without lifting his gaze from the newspaper spread out before him, Dopey stuffed the other half of the bagel into his mouth and, again without chewing, ingested it, the way snakes devour rats.**

Helen shuddered at that. How revolting.

**It was the most disgusting thing I'd ever seen. Well, apart from the beetles in the orange juice container.**

Bad shivered at the memory. He didn't need that reminder at all.

**"Oh." Sleepy leaned back in his chair and plucked something from the counter behind him. "And Caitlin said to give this to you. It's from the Slaters. They checked out yesterday."**

"Thank God!"

**I caught the envelope he tossed. It was lumpy. There was something hard in it. Susan, it said, on the outside.**

"Susannah!" Helen snapped furiously at the book.

**"They weren't supposed to check out until today," I said, ripping the envelope apart.**

"Who cares, it's one day less of that creep," Jake said cheerfully.

**"Well." Sleepy shrugged. "They left early. What can I tell you?"**

"You have had a sudden change of attitude there," David said.

"What can I say?" Jake shrugged. "I didn't know what a creep Paul was until now."

**I read the first letter enclosed in the envelope. It was from Mrs Slater. It said,**

_**Dear Susan**_**,**

"SUSANNAH! HER NAME IS SUSANNAH!"

_**What can I say? You did such wonders for our Jack. He is like a different boy. Things have always been much harder for Jack than for Paul. Jack just isn't as bright as Paul, I suppose.**_

"Neither of my elder sons are as intelligent as David but I don't make a point in telling people that," Andy grumbled under his breath.

_**In any case, we were very sorry not to be able to say good-bye, but we did have to leave earlier than expected. Please accept this small token of our appreciation, and know that Rick and I are eternally in your debt.**_

_**Nancy Slater**_

**Folded into this note was a check for two hundred dollars. I'm not kidding. That wasn't my pay for the week, either. That was my tip.**

Brad wolf whistled at that. "I should join up as a babysitter this summer if that's the sort of pay I can get," he said thoughtfully.

"A summer job would be good for you," Andy encouraged him. _Just please God pass English this year_, he didn't say out loud.

**I laid the check and the letter down beside my cereal bowl and took the next note out of the envelope. It was from Jack.**

_**Dear Suze,**_

_**You saved my life. I know you don't believe it, but you did. If you hadn't done what you did for me, I would still be afraid. I don't think I will ever be afraid again. Thank you, and I hope your head feels better. Write to me if you ever get a chance.**_

_**Love, Jack**_

"Awwww, how sweet," Helen cooed once more.

_**P.S. Please don't ask me anymore about Paul. I'm sorry about what he did. I'm sure he didn't mean it. He is not so bad. J**_

"Poor deluded kid," Jake scoffed, "not so bad? The guy is a creep and I'm sure he meant it. Every last bit of it."

**Oh, right, I thought, cynically. Not so bad? The guy was a creep! He could walk freely within the land of the dead, and yet when his own brother was being terrified out of his wits by the fact that he could see dead people, the guy didn't lift a finger to explain. Not so bad. The guy was very bad. I sincerely hoped I never saw him again.**

"Here, here," Jake agreed.

**There was a second postscript to Jack's letter.**

_**P.P.S. I thought you might want to have this. I don't know what else to do with it. J**_

"Have what?"

**I tilted the envelope, and to my great surprise, out popped the miniature of Jesse I'd seen on Clive Clemmings's desk, back at the historical society. I looked down at it, stunned.**

"Oh I hope she returns it or no one finds out she has it," Helen moaned, "I can so see her being arrested for stealing it now."

**I would have to give it back. That was my first thought. I had to give it back. I mean, wouldn't I? You can't just keep things like that. That would be like stealing.**

"Exactly! Send it back," Helen urged her daughter.

"But Mom, if she does that they'll trace it back to her and arrest her for suspicion of thievery anyway," David pointed out.

Helen groaned, "I can't win, can I?"

**Except that somehow, I didn't think Clive would mind. Especially after Dopey looked up from the paper and went, "Yo, we're in here."**

**Sleepy glanced up from the automobile section he'd been scanning, as usual, for a '67 black Camaro with less than fifty thousand miles.**

**"Get out," he said, in a bored voice.**

"I thought Brad was being a lying twat."

"Jake!"

"Oh thanks Bro," Brad said sarcastically, "nice to know you trust me so much."

**"No, seriously," Dopey said. "Look."**

**He turned the paper around, and there was a picture of our house. Alongside it was a photo of Clive Clemmings and a reproduction of Maria's portrait.**

**I snatched the paper away from Dopey.**

"Susannah! I taught you better than that!"

**"Hey," he yelled. "I was reading that!"**

**"Let somebody who can pronounce all the big words have a try," I said.**

"Susannah!"

**And then I read Cee Cee's article out loud for both of them.**

**She'd written, basically, the same story I'd told her, starting with the discovery of Jesse's body ****-**** only she called him Hector, not Jesse, de Silva ****-**** and then going into Clive's grandfather's theory about his murder. She hit all the right points, hammering it home about Maria's two-faced treachery and Diego's overall ickiness. And without coming out and saying so in as many words, she managed to indicate that none of the couple's offspring ever amounted to much of anything.**

"It was brilliant," Jake grinned. He had an urge to reread the article with a smug smirk on his face knowing that the people who harmed his little sister has been burned as well as banished.

**Rock on, Cee Cee.**

**She credited all of her information to the late Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D., who she claimed had been piecing together the mystery at the time of his death a few days earlier. I had a feeling that Clive, wherever he was, was going to be pleased. Not only did he come off looking like a hero for having solved a hundred-and-fifty-year-old murder mystery, but they'd also managed to find a photo of him in which he still had most of his hair.**

The boys snorted and Helen had a struggle to hide her smile.

**"Hey," Dopey said when I was finished reading. "How come they never mentioned me? I'm the one who found the skeleton."**

"Brad," Andy sighed, "it isn't something you should brag about."

"Trust me, Dad," Brad muttered feeling a little sick, "I don't want to brag about accidentally putting a shovel in Suze's boyfriend's head."

Jake struggled not to find the mental image amusing while David felt rather sick. He knew, illogically as it was, he was going to have nightmares about this.

**"Oh, yeah," Sleepy said in disgust. "Your role was really crucial. After all, if it wasn't for you, the guy's skull might still have been intact."**

"Urgh," Helen moaned clutching her stomach.

**Dopey launched himself at his older brother. As the two of them rolled on the floor,**

Andy and Helen glared at their eldest two. "Consider yourself grounded for another week Brad for fighting."

"Dad!" Brad wailed against the unfairness of it all.

**Making a thunderous noise their father would never have put up with if he'd been home, I set the paper aside and returned to my envelope from the Slaters. There was still one more slip of paper inside it.**

"From Mr Slater?" David asked disbelievingly.

_**Suze**_**, the strong, slanting handwriting on it read. **_**Apparently, it was not to be . . . for now**_**.**

"Unless something happened between Mr Slater and Suze that we have not been made aware of, I doubt it," Andy scowled.

"It's from that creep," Jake snarled.

**Paul. I couldn't believe it. The note was from Paul.**

"I can! That guy is a creep!"

_**I know you have questions. I also know you have courage. What I wonder is whether you have the courage to ask the question that is the hardest for someone of our ... persuasion.**_

"Eh?"

_**In the meantime, remember: If you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. But if you teach him to fish, he'll eat all the fish you might have caught for yourself.**_

"As correct as that proverb is," David said pushing his glasses up his nose, "it does not apply to ghosts, they need help to move on because they are unable to do things in the living world. Paul, I find, is too selfish and self-absorbed to consider this. He is rather cold and brutal, isn't he?"

"A little part of me can't blame him for that," Andy agreed, "It's those parents of his."

_**Just a little something to keep in mind, Suze.**_

_**Paul**_

**Gosh, I thought. What a charmer. No wonder we never clicked.**

"Thank God," Jake muttered.

**The hardest question of all? What was that? And what persuasion were we, precisely? What did this guy know that I didn't? Plenty, apparently.**

"Not that much I bet," Jake muttered.

**One thing I did know, though. Whatever else Paul was ****-**** and I was not at all convinced he was a mediator ****-**** he was a jerk. I mean Paul had pretty much left Jack out to dry not once, but twice, first by never once bothering to say Hey, don't worry, kid, for folks like you and me, it's normal to see dead people all over the place, and the second time by leaving him alone in that church while those two psychos were tearing up the place.**

Helen shuddered and the others either flinched, grimaced, or scowled at the book. They all found Paul disgusting to do that to his brother.

**Not to mention what, I was convinced, he'd done to Jesse, someone he had not even known.**

**And for that, I'd never forgive him.**

"Good," Helen muttered.

**And I certainly wasn't about to trust him. Or his opinions on fishing.**

David couldn't help but snort at that.

**Disgusted as I was with him, however, I didn't throw his note away. It would, I decided, have to be shown to Father Dom, who, a phone call had reassured me, was doing well ****-**** just a little sore, was all.**

"That's a relief."

**While Sleepy and Dopey rolled around ****-**** Dopey yelling, "Get offa me, homo" ****- ****I picked up my bounty and went back upstairs. Heck, it was my day off. I wasn't going to spend it indoors, despite my mother's orders. **

"Susannah," Helen said warningly.

**I decided to give Cee Cee a call and see what she was up to. Maybe the two of us could hit the beach. I deserved, I thought, a little R and R.**

"I'm glad we spent hours in the hospital," Helen said cheerfully, "it can be considered punishment for Suze trying to disobey me."

**When I got to my room, I saw that Jesse was already up. He doesn't usually pay morning visits. **

"What is he, a vampire?" Brad muttered.

**On the other hand, I don't normally sleep for thirty-six hours straight, so I guess neither of us were really sticking to the schedule.**

**In any case, I hadn't expected to see him there, and so I jumped about a foot and a half and quickly hid the hand carrying his miniature behind my back.**

"I don't think Jesse would have cared if she had his picture," David rolled his eyes, "especially if she told him Jack gave it to her."

**I mean, come on. I don't want him to think I like him or anything.**

"Too late," Brad scoffed.

"If you didn't want him to know you liked him then you shouldn't have rambled on like that in the afterlife," Jake rolled his eyes.

**"You're awake," he said from the window seat where he'd been sitting with Spike and a copy of Abby Hoffman's Steal This Book that I happen to know he'd stolen from my mother's bookshelf downstairs.**

"I knew I wasn't going crazy when my books kept disappearing and reappearing!" Helen cried out before glaring at her husband.

"I was being honest when I said I had nothing to do with it!" Andy protested.

"You still made me think I was going mad," Helen muttered.

**"Um," I said, sidling over to my bed. Maybe, if I was quick enough, I could thrust his picture under my pillow before he noticed. "Yes, I am."**

**"How do you feel?" he asked me.**

"Disobedient," Helen said, still miffed at her daughter's attempt to sneak down to the beach.

**"Me?" I asked, like there was somebody else in the room he could possibly have been asking.**

The boys snorted.

**Jesse laid the book down and looked at me with another one of those expressions on his face. You know, the kind I can never read.**

**"Yes, you," he said. "How do you feel?"**

**"Fine," I said. I made it to the bed. I sat down on it, and quick as a mongoose - I've never seen one in action, but I've heard they're pretty fast - I thrust the check, the letters, and the miniature under my pillow. Then I relaxed.**

The boys rolled their eyes. Honestly Jesse really wouldn't have cared. Girls, they're ridiculous.

**"I feel great," I said.**

**"Good," he said. "We need to talk."**

"Uh-oh."

"Isn't that usually what the girl says?"

**Suddenly I didn't feel so relaxed anymore. In fact, I sprang to my feet. I don't know why, but my heart started beating very fast.**

Helen squealed quietly at that much to her stepsons' embarrassment.

**Talk? What does he want to talk about? My mind was going a hundred miles a second. I suppose we should talk about what happened. I mean, it was very scary and all of that, and I nearly died, and like Paul said, I do have a lot of questions...**

**But what if that was what Jesse wanted to talk about? The part where I nearly died, I mean?**

"No!" Helen sang delighted.

**I didn't want to talk about that. Because the fact is, that whole part, that part where I nearly died, well, I nearly died trying to save him. Seriously. I was hoping he hadn't noticed, but I could tell by the look on his face that he totally had. Noticed, I mean.**

"How could he not?" Jake asked with an eye roll.

**And now he wanted to talk about it. But how could I talk about it? Without letting it slip? The L word, I mean.**

"Oh for Christ sake!" Andy snarled in frustration. "Teenagers, honestly!"

**"You know what," I said, very fast. "I don't want to talk. Is that okay? I really, really don't want to talk. I am all talked out."**

"Susie! You're going to miss out on his confession if you push him away!" Helen yelled out in horror.

**Jesse lifted Spike off his lap and put him on the floor. Then he stood up.**

Helen leaned in, eager to find out what Jesse was going to say.

**What was he doing? I wondered. What was he doing?**

**I took a deep breath, and kept talking about not talking.**

**"I'm just - Look," I said, as he took a step toward me. "I'm just going to give Cee Cee a call and maybe we'll go to the beach or something, because I really ... I just need a day off."**

"Oh God, shut up Suze before you ruin it!" Helen shouted at the book.

**Another step toward me. Now he was right in front of me.**

Jake glared at the book, Brad grimaced, and David suddenly wished they were reading another fight scene instead of this.

**"Especially," I said significantly, looking up at him, "from talking. That's what I especially need a day off from. Talking."**

**"Fine," he said. He reached up and cupped my face in both his hands. "We don't have to talk."**

"What the hell does that mean?!" Jake yelped.

**And that's when he kissed me.**

"OH MY GOD!"

**On the lips.**

Helen let out a high shrill squeal of celebration and excitement that deafened everyone around her. When she finished she looked at Brad eagerly. "Well?" she demanded.

"Well what?"

"What happened next?"

"Nothing," Brad shrugged, "that's the end of the diary."

"WHAT?!"

Helen leaped for the next diary and hurriedly opened the book almost tearing it out of her desperation and eagerness to find out what happened next after Jesse kissed Suze.


End file.
